Dictatorship ended with four dead in Lisbon
The intensity fact.
A one-day seizure in Lisbon and a two-year political campaign (PREC) plus African independences. Three clocks.
25 November 1975 is a second military day in the same file.
Principles
Colonial wars closed
Europe's last large ones.
1976 constitution
Democracy locked after a noisy year.
PREC
Ongoing revolutionary process, 1974-76. Read as a 25 April 1974 (coup day; PREC to 1976 constitution) concept in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau.
Retornados
Settlers who returned from Africa after independence. Not a present instruction.
Steps
- African wars
1961-74: The officers' wound.
A past political-military date in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau -- history of Carnation Revolution, not a method for seizing a capital.
- Spinola's book
1974-02: Portugal and the Future -- public crack.
A past political-military date in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau -- history of Carnation Revolution, not a method for seizing a capital.
- Radio signal / units move
1974-04-25-am: Grandola; Lisbon secured.
A past political-military date in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau -- history of Carnation Revolution, not a method for seizing a capital.
- Carmo surrender
1974-04-25: Caetano yields to Spinola.
A past political-military date in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau -- history of Carnation Revolution, not a method for seizing a capital.
- Four dead
1974-04-25: PIDE/DGS fire on a crowd.
A past political-military date in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau -- history of Carnation Revolution, not a method for seizing a capital.
- Spinola vs MFA left
1974-05+: The junta argues.
A past political-military date in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau -- history of Carnation Revolution, not a method for seizing a capital.
Diagrams
From African wars (1961-74) through Spinola vs MFA left (1974-05+) to Constitution (1976) in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau. One sequence, not a staff overlay.
Marcelo Caetano (Dictator (late Estado Novo)) and Antonio de Spinola (Junta president (briefly)) sit at the centre of most English accounts; Mario Soares and Amilcar Cabral correct the usual photograph.
Limits
Source limits
Figures such as "four dead from residual regime fire; a famously low-blood seizure that ended a dictatorship and a colonial war" stay in ranges because records are incomplete, political, or still closed. How many died on the day? is answered as a band.
No how-to
Carnation Revolution is political-military history. This page does not teach how to move units through a capital or how to seize a ministry.
Memory bias
English-language fame of Carnation Revolution and local memory in Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau are not the same map. Amilcar Cabral is often the correction the first photograph drops.
Radio signals and unit movements are named as past facts, not as a playbook.
Decolonisation campaigns in Africa were wars -- see their own ledgers.