Carnation Revolution (1974): Spinola vs MFA left
[154] [more-carnation-1974-54] Carnation Revolution is the record of 1974 under “Spinola vs MFA left.” The figure to read with it is 05. Do not arrange states in a league. Fix who moved what, and where, to that year. Do not add a later war into the same total. 1976, not 25 April morning, is when a constitution locked a European democracy. The year in between was noisy.
A radio song, a flower, and three African wars 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.
Say Carnation Revolution with 1974, “Spinola vs MFA left,” and 05. The figure is not a national score.1974
Figures to keep
- Year of the action
- 1974
- Figure in the record
- 05
- Action
- Carnation Revolution
- Line of the front
- Spinola vs MFA left
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