FNAT Stadium (renamed Estádio 1.º de Maio)

The stadium belonged to the FNAT, the National Foundation for Joy at Work. On 27 April 1974, two days after the revolution, Decree-Law no. 175/74 made May Day (1 May) a compulsory national holiday, with immediate effect.¹ It was, in the words of the Aljube Museum, the first legal achievement after the revolution.²

Four days later, there were large demonstrations in at least 78 places, and around a million people took to the streets.¹ In Lisbon, the march gathered on the Alameda D. Afonso Henriques and went through the streets to here; that day the FNAT stadium was renamed Estádio 1.º de Maio (May Day Stadium).¹² The 25 April Documentation Centre counts around 500,000 people at the Lisbon demonstration.³

The rally was held under the slogan “Peace, Bread and Freedom” (Paz, Pão e Liberdade). Those who spoke were trade union leaders — Manuel Correia Lopes, Jerónimo Franco, Gomes Peres and José Nunes Lourenço — delegates from foreign organisations and well-known opponents of the deposed regime: Pereira de Moura, for the MDP, the architect Nuno Teotónio Pereira, for the progressive Catholics, and the two leaders who had returned from exile in those days, Mário Soares, of the PS, and Álvaro Cunhal, of the PCP. Soares hailed the Armed Forces and all the parties, “without any exception or any discrimination”, and embraced Cunhal; Cunhal acclaimed the military and the first measures “to liquidate the fascist dictatorship and establish freedom”. The Commemorative Commission for the 50 Years of 25 April calls it the first and last May Day in unity.¹