Carnation Revolution (1975): Stabilising day

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.