The 25 April 1974 MFA coup that ended the Estado Novo with carnations in rifle barrels -- a junta against a dictatorship, not a manual.
Educational history. Casualty figures are documented ranges. This is not operational advice, a ranking of nations, or a how-to for weapons or coups.
In the early hours of 25 April 1974 the Portuguese Armed Forces Movement (MFA) overthrew Marcelo Caetano's Estado Novo, the dictatorship Salazar had built. A banned song, "Grandola, Vila Morena," played on the radio as a signal. Troops secured Lisbon with almost no fighting. Crowds put red carnations in rifle barrels -- the image that named the revolution.
Four people died when regime police fired on a crowd. Caetano surrendered at the Carmo barracks to General Spinola. The colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau -- the officers' wound -- ended in a rush of independences (1974-75) and in chaotic, sometimes violent decolonisations, especially Angola.
Intensity in this atlas is near the floor: a coup that refused a bloodbath at home. Political impact was real: democracy in Portugal, an end to Europe's last large colonial war, and a PREC (ongoing revolutionary process) that frightened NATO allies until the 1976 constitution. English memory is a pretty flower and a Eurovision-adjacent folk song. This page keeps the wars in Africa in the paragraph. It is not a how-to.
Deep introduction
25 April was gentle in Lisbon because it was exhausted in Guinea, Angola and Mozambique -- a soldiers' coup against a war the dictatorship would not end.
A decade of African wars, a closed political system, and junior officers who could not see a military victory produced the MFA. Spinola's book Portugal and the Future (1974) cracked public speech.
This is a political-military cause, not a tactic list.
Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho's operations plan moved units into Lisbon. The Carmo surrender was televised. Carnations were a civilian improvisation on a nearly bloodless seizure.
Four dead from PIDE/DGS fire remain the day's ledger -- low is not none.
1974-76 saw nationalisations, land occupations, and a near-miss of civil conflict. Angola's independence became a Cold War war. Retornados flooded Portugal.
NATO watched a member state's revolution with alarm; the 1976 constitution settled a democracy.
25 April is a Portuguese civic holiday. English travel writing keeps the flowers and drops the African dead of the prior decade. This atlas will not.
Memory of a gentle coup stays dated: 1974-04-25 (Carmo surrender) in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau. Salgueiro Maia (Captain on the ground) is a named witness -- The televised young officer of Carmo -- a popular face of the captains. Cost band: four dead from residual regime fire; a famously low-blood seizure that ended a dictatorship and a colonial war. Encyclopedia, not a method.
Dated history of Carnation Revolution (25 April 1974 (coup day; PREC to 1976 constitution)) in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau.
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02Historical forces and institutions of Carnation Revolution -- not a live order of battle.
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03How Carnation Revolution unfolded as historical sequence, not instruction.
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04Human and material cost of Carnation Revolution, as documented ranges.
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05People and debates around Carnation Revolution.
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06Afterlives and unresolved questions of Carnation Revolution.
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07Maps, portrayals and rituals of Carnation Revolution.
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