History Lesson - Portuguese Government

I've been able to write in a few entries this week...  Can you tell that I'm back at work, and that work has been coming in slow?..

 

Anyways, with my cousin Tania visiting, I've learned a few things about Portuguese government that I did not know previous.  Tania is studying law in Lisbon, so of course she knows a lot of history.  I don't know how the discussion started, but we started talking about the former reign of Antonio Salazar, and the Portuguese Revolution of April 25, 1974.  Of course I felt quite stupid and uninformed when Tania went on to explain what happened on that day; I could tell by the expression on her face that she was surprised that I didn't know much about it.  How embarrassing..but I confess to you that I'm not all up to date with history at all.  I did know that April 25th was the start of the end of a dictatorship that was started by former ruler, Salazar, and it was called the "Carnation Revolution."  Here is some more history, if you are interested: 

 

(Pasted and copied from :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution  )

 

                                            

The Carnation Revolution (Portuguese, Revolução dos Cravos) was an almost bloodless, left-leaning, military-led coup d'état, started on April 25, 1974, in Lisbon, Portugal, that effectively changed the Portuguese regime from an authoritarian dictatorship to a liberal democracy after a two-year process of a Left-wing semi-military administration. Although government forces killed four people before surrendering, the revolution was unusual in that the revolutionaries did not use direct violence to achieve their goals. The population, holding red carnations, convinced the regime soldiers not to resist. The soldiers readily swapped their bullets for flowers. It was the end of the Estado Novo, the longest authoritarian regime in Western Europe (but not the last to fall; Francisco Franco ruled Spain until 1975). The revolution is often simply referred to, as its celebratory holiday, 25 de Abril (the 25th of April).

 

                                               

 

The revolution in Portugal initiated the process which political scientist Samuel P. Huntington called the "third wave of democratisation;" a process of democratisation which then spread to Greece, Spain and Latin America. Soon after the 25th, all of the hundreds of political prisoners were liberated from prison. Exiled opposition political leaders, like Álvaro Cunhal and Mário Soares returned to the country in the following days and were received in apotheosis. One week later, May 1st was legally celebrated in the streets for the first time in many years. In Lisbon, about 1,000,000 people from all the country joined this occasion and listened to the speeches of Cunhal and Soares.

Portugal went through a turbulent period, commonly called the Ongoing Revolutionary Process (Portuguese: Processo Revolucionário em Curso, or PREC) that lasted until November 25, 1975, marked by constant friction between liberal democratic forces and communist ones. After a year, the first free election was carried out on April 25, 1975 in order to write a new Constitution that would replace the Constitution of 1933 that ruled the country for the reign of the Estado Novo. In 1976, another election was carried out and the first Constitutional government, led by Mário Soares, entered office. Meanwhile, the colonial war ended and the African colonies gained independence (The granting on independence to Mozambique was one of the major factors that led to the fall of Rhodesia four years later). The colony of East Timor also proclaimed its independence, but was invaded by Indonesia in 1975.

The decolonisation process, whose guidelines were approved with the Alvor Agreement, was generally marked by the handover of power, without free elections, to liberation movements (some supported by the Soviet Union) and by the general disregard for the interests and property of the Portuguese-born or Portuguese-origin population.

Freedom Day

Freedom Day on April 25 is a national holiday in Portugal, with official and some popular commemorations, though some right-wing sectors of the population still regard the developments after the coup d'état as pernicious for the country. On the other hand, some of the military leaders lament that the leftist inspiration of the uprising has since been abandoned. The carnation is the symbol of this revolution, since soldiers put these flowers in their guns, in what came to symbolise the absence of violence in changing the regime in Portugal — a regime that had been one of the longest single right-wing party regimes of the 20th century.

It's good to know that some revolutions can end peacefully with little blood shed. 

photos courtesy of Google