MFA
Armed Forces Movement -- the captains' organisation. A faction or legal office in the Carnation Revolution file -- past politics, not a present directory.
MFA units from the army (and other services) versus a regime whose police fired the only lethal shots in Lisbon. Historical description of 1974 forces, not a present Portuguese ORBAT.
African liberation armies were the other "force" that made the coup thinkable.
Systems
Estado Novo
The Salazar/Caetano dictatorship (1933-1974).
PREC
Ongoing revolutionary process, 1974-76.
Marcelo Caetano as centre
Salazar's successor; surrendered at Carmo. Died in Brazilian exile.
Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho as legal object
Planned the Lisbon movements; later a controversial PREC figure and a 1980s trial -- a long afterlife.
Civilian / alliance context
Amilcar Cabral (PAIGC (Guinea-Bissau)): Assassinated in 1973; his war is why Portuguese captains moved. An African icon of the cause, dead before 25 April. Named as history, not as a remote-control cartoon.
Meters
Geographic / demographic scale
16
Peak political violence
12
How long it defined a period
15
Tech or method shift
10
Borders, regimes, law, alliances
58
Film, school, ritual density
48
Hotspots
Late empire war
1961-74: Three African fronts. Named as historical geography of Carnation Revolution, not as a targeting list.
The day
25 Apr 1974: MFA, carnations, Carmo. Named as historical geography of Carnation Revolution, not as a targeting list.
PREC / decolonisation
1974-75: Revolution at home; independences abroad. Named as historical geography of Carnation Revolution, not as a targeting list.
Stabilising day
25 Nov 1975: A second military intervention that Portuguese memory still argues. Named as historical geography of Carnation Revolution, not as a targeting list.
Democracy
1976-: Constitution; later EU Portugal. Named as historical geography of Carnation Revolution, not as a targeting list.
Materials
Chronology (25 April 1974 (coup day; PREC to 1976 constitution))
Carnation Revolution is bounded as 25 April 1974 (coup day; PREC to 1976 constitution). 1961-74 opens the usual narrative (African wars); 1976 closes it (Constitution).
Theatre: Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks.
Place is evidence. Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau is where Carnation Revolution happened -- a map for readers, not a guide for repeating it.
Human-cost band
four dead from residual regime fire; a famously low-blood seizure that ended a dictatorship and a colonial war Keep the figure as a range. Spectacle integers are not a census.
Grandola
The signal song on the radio. A material of the Carnation Revolution vocabulary, dated to 25 April 1974 (coup day; PREC to 1976 constitution).
No operations order will be reconstructed as a template.
Carnations in barrels are a civilian-military image, not a tactic.