On Thursday, Portugal will commemorate 50 years since the military takeover known as the Carnation Revolution, which put an end to its colonial wars in Africa and ushered in a democracy that has recently run afoul of the far right.
On April 25, 1974, the public’s instant support for a non-commissioned officers’ revolt caused the oldest authoritarian government in Western Europe at the time to collapse in a matter of hours, almost without any bloodshed.
During this period of political, economic, and social upheaval, the red carnations inserted into the rifle muzzles of the young soldiers who heroically freed a people enslaved to a dictatorship that started in 1926 swiftly became the iconic image of the times.
The coup would open the way for the country’s first free elections based on universal suffrage on April 25, 1975, as well as the independence of Portugal’s remaining African colonies: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.
“The colonial wars had a fundamental influence in opening our eyes to the situation in Portugal,” retired colonel Vasco Lourenco told AFP, one of the officers who took part in the coup and now heads the April 25 Association which represents putschist soldiers like him.
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