Carnation Revolution (1970): Colonial wars closed

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.