1974 revolution in Portugal and its colonies
The Carnation Revolution (), also known as the 25 April (), was a military coup by military officers that overthrew the authoritarian Estado Novo government on 25 April 1974 in Lisbon, producing major social, economic, territorial, demographic, and political changes in Portugal and its overseas colonies through the Processo Revolucionário Em Curso. It resulted in the Portuguese transition to democracy and the end of the Portuguese Colonial War.
The revolution began as a coup organised by the Armed Forces Movement (, MFA), composed of military officers who opposed the regime, but it was soon coupled with an unanticipated popular civil resistance campaign. Negotiations with African independence movements began, and by the end of 1974, Portuguese troops were withdrawn from Portuguese Guinea, which became a UN member state as Guinea-Bissau. This was followed in 1975 by the independence of Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola in Africa and the declaration of independence of East Timor in Southeast Asia. These events prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens from Portugal's African territories (mostly from Angola and Mozambique), creating over a million Portuguese "returned" – the "retornados".
The Carnation Revolution got its name from the fact that almost no shots were fired, and from restaurant worker Celeste Caeiro who offered carnations to soldiers when the population took to the streets to celebrate the end of the dictatorship. Other demonstrators followed suit and placed carnations in the muzzles of guns and on soldiers' uniforms. In Portugal, 25 April is a national holiday (, Freedom Day) that commemorates the revolution.
Background.
By the 1970s, nearly a half-century of authoritarian rule weighed on Portugal. The 28 May 1926 coup d'état implemented an authoritarian regime incorporating social Catholicism and integralism. In 1933, the regime was renamed the Estado Novo (New State). António de Oliveira Salazar served as Prime Minister until 1968.
In sham elections the government candidate usually ran unopposed, while the opposition used the limited political freedoms allowed during the brief election period to protest, withdrawing their candidates before the election to deny the regime political legitimacy. 
The Estado Novo's political police, the PIDE (Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, later the DGS, Direcção-Geral de Segurança and originally the PVDE, Polícia de Vigilância e Defesa do Estado), persecuted opponents of the regime, who were often tortured, imprisoned or killed.
In 1958, General Humberto Delgado, a former member of the regime, stood against the regime's presidential candidate, Américo Tomás, and refused to allow his name to be withdrawn. Tomás won the election amidst claims of widespread electoral fraud, and the Salazar government abandoned the practice of popularly electing the president and gave the task to the National Assembly.
Portugal's Estado Novo government remained neutral in the Second World War, and was initially tolerated by its NATO post-war partners due to its anti-communist stance. As the Cold War developed, Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc states vied with each other in supporting guerrillas in the Portuguese colonies, leading to the 1961–1974 Portuguese Colonial War.
Salazar had a stroke in 1968, and was replaced as prime minister by Marcelo Caetano, who adopted a slogan of "continuous evolution", suggesting reforms, such as a monthly pension to rural workers who had never contributed to Portugal's social security. Caetano's Primavera Marcelista (Marcelist Spring) included greater political tolerance and freedom of the press, and was seen as an opportunity for the opposition to gain concessions from the regime. In 1969, Caetano authorised the country's first democratic labour union movement since the 1920s. However, after the elections of 1969 and 1973, hard-liners in the government and the military pushed back against Caetano, with political repression against communists and anti-colonialists.
Economic conditions.
The Estado Novo regime's economic policy encouraged the formation of large conglomerates. The regime maintained a policy of corporatism which resulted in the placement of much of the economy in the hands of conglomerates including those founded by the families of António Champalimaud (Banco Totta &amp; Açores, Banco Pinto &amp; Sotto Mayor, Secil, Cimpor), José Manuel de Mello (Companhia União Fabril), Américo Amorim (Corticeira Amorim) and the dos Santos family (Jerónimo Martins).
One of the largest was the Companhia União Fabril (CUF), with a wide range of interests including cement, petro and agro chemicals, textiles, beverages, naval and electrical engineering, insurance, banking, paper, tourism and mining, with branches, plants and projects throughout the Portuguese Empire.
Other medium-sized family companies specialised in textiles (such as those in Covilhã and the northwest), ceramics, porcelain, glass and crystal (such as those in Alcobaça, Caldas da Rainha and Marinha Grande), engineered wood (such as SONAE, near Porto), canned fish (Algarve and the northwest), fishing, food and beverages (liqueurs, beer and port wine), tourism (in Estoril, Cascais, Sintra and the Algarve) and agriculture (the Alentejo, known as the breadbasket of Portugal) by the early-1970s. Rural families engaged in agriculture and forestry.
Income from the colonies came from resource extraction, of oil, coffee, cotton, cashews, coconuts, timber, minerals (including diamonds), metals (such as iron and aluminium), bananas, citrus, tea, sisal, beer, cement, fish and other seafood, beef and textiles. Labour unions were subject to severe restrictions, and minimum wage laws were not enforced. Starting in the 1960s, the outbreak of colonial wars in Africa set off significant social changes, among them the rapid incorporation of women into the labour market.
Colonial war.
Independence movements began in the African colonies of Portuguese Mozambique, Portuguese Congo, Portuguese Angola, and Portuguese Guinea. The Salazar and Caetano regimes responded with diverting more and more of Portugal's budget to colonial administration and military expenditure, and the country became increasingly isolated from the rest of the world, facing increasing internal dissent, arms embargoes and other international sanctions.
By the early-1970s, the Portuguese military was overstretched and there was no political solution in sight. Although the number of casualties was relatively small, the war had entered its second decade; Portugal faced criticism from the international community, and was becoming increasingly isolated. In 1973 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for Portugal's immediate withdrawal from Guinea. Atrocities such as the Wiriyamu Massacre undermined the war's popularity and the government's diplomatic position, although details of the massacre are still disputed.
The war became unpopular in Portugal, and the country became increasingly polarised. Thousands of left-wing students and anti-war activists avoided conscription by emigrating illegally, primarily to France and the United States. Meanwhile three generations of right-wing militants in Portuguese schools were guided by a revolutionary nationalism partially influenced by European neo-fascism, and supported the Portuguese Empire and an authoritarian regime.
The war had a profound impact on the country. The revolutionary Armed Forces Movement (MFA) began as an attempt to liberate Portugal from the Estado Novo regime and challenge new military laws which were coming into force. The laws would reduce the military budget and reformulate the Portuguese military. Younger military-academy graduates resented Caetano's programme of commissioning militia officers who completed a brief training course and had served in the colonies' defensive campaigns at the same rank as academy graduates.
Revolution.
In February 1974, Caetano decided to remove General António de Spínola from the command of Portuguese forces in Guinea in the face of Spínola's increasing disagreement with the promotion of military officers and the direction of Portuguese colonial policy. This occurred shortly after the publication of Spínola's book, "Portugal and the Future", which expressed his political and military views of the Portuguese Colonial War. Several military officers who opposed the war formed the MFA to overthrow the government in a military coup. The MFA was headed by Vítor Alves, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho and Vasco Lourenço, and was joined later by Salgueiro Maia. The movement was aided by other Portuguese army officers who supported Spínola and democratic civil and military reform.
The coup had two secret signals. First, the disc jockey at Emissores Associados de Lisboa gave the time signal "Falta cinco minutos às vinte e três" at 10:55 p.m. on 24 April before turntabling Paulo de Carvalho's "E Depois do Adeus" (Portugal's entry in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest). This alerted rebel captains and soldiers to begin the coup. The second signal came at 12:20 a.m. on 25 April, when Rádio Renascença broadcast "Grândola, Vila Morena" (a song by Zeca Afonso, an influential political folk musician and singer, many of whose songs were banned from Portuguese radio at the time). The MFA gave the signals to take over strategic points of power in the country. The content of the songs was largely uncontroversial—censorship would have prevented more inflammatory songs—their broadcasting was a signal, not a direct call to arms.
Six hours later, the Caetano government relented. Despite repeated radio appeals from the "captains of April" (the MFA) advising civilians to stay home, thousands of Portuguese took to the streets – mingling with, and supporting, the military insurgents. A central gathering point was the Lisbon flower market, then richly stocked with carnations (which were in season). Some of the insurgents put carnations in their gun barrels, an image broadcast on television worldwide which gave the revolution its name. Although no mass demonstrations preceded the coup, spontaneous civilian involvement turned the military coup into a popular revolution "led by radical army officers, soldiers, workers and peasants that toppled the senile Salazar dictatorship, using the language of socialism and democracy. The attempt to radicalise the outcome", noted a contemporary observer of the time, "had little mass support and was easily suppressed by the Socialist Party and its allies."
Caetano found refuge in the main headquarters of the Lisbon military police, the National Republican Guard, at the Largo do Carmo. This building was surrounded by the MFA, which pressured him to cede power to General Spínola. Caetano and President Américo Tomás were sent to Brazil; Caetano spent the rest of his life there, and Tomás returned to Portugal a few years later. The revolution was closely watched by neighbouring Spain, where the government (and the opposition) were planning the succession of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Franco died a year and a half later, in 1975.
Four civilians were shot dead by government forces under the Directorate General of Security, whose personnel involved were later arrested by the MFA for their murders.
Aftermath.
After the coup, power was held by the National Salvation Junta (a military junta). Portugal experienced a turbulent period, known as the Processo Revolucionário Em Curso (Ongoing Revolutionary Process).
The conservative forces surrounding Spinola and the MFA radicals initially confronted each other covertly or overtly, and Spinola was forced to appoint key MFA figures to senior security positions. Right-wing military figures attempted an unsuccessful counter-coup, leading to Spinola's removal from office. Unrest within the MFA between leftist forces often close to the Communist Party, and more moderate groups often allied with the Socialists eventually led to the group's splintering and dissolution.
This stage of the PREC lasted until the coup of 25 November 1975, led by a group of far-left officers, specifically Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho. It was said to be a Communist plot to seize power, in order to discredit the powerful Communist Party. It was followed by a successful counter-coup by more centrist officers, and was marked by constant friction between liberal-democratic forces and leftist-communist political parties. Portugal's first free election was held on 25 April 1975 to write a new constitution replacing the 1933 constitution in force during the Estado Novo era. Another election was held in 1976, and the first constitutional government, led by centre-left socialist Mário Soares, took office.
Decolonisation.
Before April 1974, the intractable Portuguese colonial war in Africa consumed up to 40 percent of the Portuguese budget. Although part of Guinea-Bissau became independent "de facto" in 1973, Bissau (its capital) and the large towns were still under Portuguese control. In Angola and Mozambique independence movements were active in more remote rural areas from which the Portuguese Army had retreated.
A consequence of the Carnation Revolution was the sudden withdrawal of Portuguese administrative and military personnel from its overseas colonies. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese Africans returned to Portugal, becoming known as the "retornados". These people—workers, small business people, and farmers—often had deep roots in the former colonies.
Angola began a decades-long civil war which involved the Soviet Union, Cuba, South Africa, and the United States. Millions of Angolans died in the aftermath of independence due to armed conflict, malnutrition and disease. After a brief period of stability, Mozambique became embroiled in a civil war which left it one of the poorest nations in