Rossio (Praça de D. Pedro IV)

In May 1958, when Humberto Delgado, the opposition candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, came back from Porto, a crowd was waiting for him all the way from Santa Apolónia to the Terreiro do Paço. The PIDE diverted the general’s motorcade to the eastern part of the city, and the GNR chased and beat his supporters across the Terreiro do Paço, the Rossio, the Restauradores and the streets of the Baixa.¹

On May Day (1 May) 1962, at the height of the academic crisis, workers and students burst into the Baixa shouting “We are hungry!” (Temos fome!), “Freedom!” (Liberdade!), “Down with fascism!” (Abaixo o fascismo!), “Down with the PIDE!” (Abaixo a PIDE!). There were clashes in the Terreiro do Paço, the Carmo, the Rossio, Martim Moniz and Alcântara, and the riot police, the GNR, the PIDE and the Portuguese Legion only regained control late into the night. Near Largo do Caldas, the police shot dead the printer Estêvão Giro, aged 25.² At the Café Gelo, here on the Rossio, a group of writers and painters had been meeting since 1957 — Mário Cesariny, Herberto Helder, Luiz Pacheco, Natália Correia, among others.⁴ That day the police stormed into the café, laying about them with truncheons. Luiz Pacheco remembered the metal sugar bowls flying and policemen ending up in the Rossio’s fountain pool; days later, after being summoned to the police station, the manager told the group that he could no longer have them there.⁵

Ten years later, a few days after the re-election of Américo Tomás on 25 July 1972, the Revolutionary Brigades let loose two pigs dressed as admirals in the middle of the Rossio and in Alcântara, while leaflet bombs scattered pamphlets against the “electoral farce” — “a bigger puppet show and a filthy mess” (uma fantochada maior e uma porcaria).³

At around midday on 25 April 1974, the column led by Salgueiro Maia passed through here, on its way from the Terreiro do Paço to Largo do Carmo among thousands of people. In the Rossio it met a force from the 1st Infantry Regiment, sent to stop it, which placed itself under the Movement’s orders and followed it.⁶ For the 25 April Association, it was here that the people of Lisbon showed their support for the revolution, and it was also here that the gesture of Celeste Caeiro was repeated: the carnation given to a soldier, who put it in the barrel of his rifle.⁷