Gentlemen, there are three different types of state – the socialist states, the capitalist states, and the state we find ourselves in! On this solemn night, we are finally going to put an end to it.’
With these rousing words, Salgueiro Maia, the troop commander at the Belem barracks and a leader of the Armed Forces Movement, led his troops into the dark streets of Lisbon in the early hours of April 25, 1974. Within 24 hours, he had toppled the dictatorship, setting Portugal on a new path.
As a dictator, Prime Minister Antonio Salazar had clung fast to Portugal’s widely dispersed colonies, but to many, they were simply stagnant outposts hanging over from the Age of Discovery. However, Salazar and his successor, Marcello Caetano, viewed them as an essential part of the standing of Portugal. The colonies gave the country an international status, vastly exceeding its diminutive stature amongst the nations of Europe, and, ideologically, the dictatorship could not loosen its grip on them. For Portugal’s economy, they also served a purpose: they were a source of cheap raw materials and guaranteed markets for manufactured exports.
But all this overlooked the reality that the populations living in the colonies yearned to be free of their colonial master. The Portuguese government simply remained deaf to these aspirations, while the British government moved quickly to dismantle its empire, and France followed suit after its humiliating defeat in Algeria. In Portugal’s principal colonies – Angola, Mozambique and Guinea – there were powerful movements for independence, and guerilla forces prepared to battle it out with the authorities. The price of holding on to their possessions, and attempting to crush rebellions inevitably mounted. By the late 1960s, 40% of Portugal’s state budget was committed to military expenditure. The price was high in other terms; by the end of the colonial wars, 8,300 Portuguese troops had died in the attempt to defy the inevitable.
But the biggest price paid by the regime in Lisbon was political; the colonial wars eventually lost it the support of its own military. Opposition in the ranks to the government’s colonial policy gave rise in the first instance to the loosely formed Captains Movement (movimento dos capitães – MFA). A significant proportion of the young men who entered the professional army from the late 1960s onwards had been through university, and were radicalised by the left-wing student movements that proliferated at the time. They questioned the ethical basis of colonialism. Many secretly opened dialogue with the guerilla movements they were supposed to be fighting, and came to support their call for independence.
As the Captains Movement gained momentum, many conscripted troops began refusing to take the oath. Some even deserted after learning they were about to be sent to one of the colonial battle fronts. The army began struggling for recruits, as many young men left Portugal to work abroad in order to avoid the draft.
Disaffection with their task spread up the highest ranks. In Guinea, the Commander in Chief, General Antonio de Spinola, once close to the regime in Lisbon, published Portugal and the Future, in which he controversially argued for negotiated autonomy for the colonies. His brave stand cost him his posting, and he was promptly summoned back to Lisbon. But the Captains Movement now saw that its cause had support in the highest places.
The movement was also strongly motivated by concern over the dwindling prestige of the military. There was little public support for the regime’s rigid colonialism and, thus, widespread distaste at the actions of the armed forces. Professional soldiers saw their status further eroded when the government, in an attempt to defuse resistance, offered conscripted soldiers fast-track advancement through the service. The combined loss of status and prestige proved too much for many, adding further momentum to the growing revolt amongst the captains.
This simmering but widespread unrest lacked focus – until in late 1973, around 300 officers met at a secret location in Cascais and established the Armed Forces Movement, with the clear intention of forcing an end to the colonial wars, and to the dictatorship in Lisbon. Its chief strategist Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho had served in Angola and Guinea, working in the latter case alongside Spinola. Carvalho devised a detailed plan for a coup d’etat. He told the Movement’s members that he reckoned they had a 80% chance of success.
The Movement didn’t have long to put its daring plan into action. The regime’s secret police, the PIDE, had knowledge of their intentions and was planning to snuff out the organisation and its leading figures.
Carvalho set the date, distributed his plans to his co-conspirators from a park bench in Lisbon, and in the early hours of 25 April 1974, the prearranged signal – the broadcasting of Portugal’s Eurovision entry for that year – was sent. Salgueiro Maia gave his rallying speech and the tanks rumbled out of the Belem barracks headed for the office of the Prime Minister. Caetano put up hardly any resistance, and surrendered to General Spinola.
The dictatorship founded by Salazar, which had lasted for almost half a century, was over. The military had done what he often feared they might. A few brave captains had ended the dictatorship and set the colonies towards independence. Their actions reshaped Portugal, which stumbled its way from dictatorship to democracy between 1974 and 1976.
James Plaskitt is a retired politician who was a member of the British Parliament from 1997 until 2010. He now lives in the Algarve.
This concludes our series on the Shapers of Portugal. We hope you have enjoyed it.
