The first day

The column from the Cavalry Practical School left Santarém at 03:30, under the command of Captain Salgueiro Maia, and at around six in the morning it occupied this square, the Bank of Portugal and Rádio Marconi — “Toledo, Brussels and Vienna” in the Movement’s code. The first forces sent by the regime placed themselves under the orders of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA).²

In the ministries around the square, the Army Minister had a hole knocked through a wall into the Navy Ministry with pickaxes, and ministers and military chiefs escaped that way. On the river, at 07:30, the frigate Almirante Gago Coutinho was ordered to take up position opposite the Terreiro do Paço and open fire on the armoured vehicles. It did not fire.⁹

In mid-morning a force loyal to the regime, with M47 tanks, arrived along the Ribeira das Naus. Salgueiro Maia went to meet it with a white handkerchief in his hand. Brigadier Junqueira dos Reis ordered Officer Cadet Fernando Sottomayor to open fire on him; the cadet refused and was placed under arrest. The same order was given to the tank gunners, and they too refused. “That was where 25 April was won,” Maia would say.⁹

Shortly afterwards, here on Rua do Arsenal, Lieutenants Alfredo Assunção and Santos Silva tried to negotiate with the brigadier. Exasperated, he punched Lieutenant Assunção three times, and Assunção did not hit back: he saluted him and withdrew.³

The Movement’s communiqués asked the population to stay at home. Lisbon did the opposite and took to the streets.¹² At around midday the armoured vehicles left the Terreiro do Paço for the Carmo; in the Rossio, a company sent to stop them placed itself under the Movement’s orders, and the column climbed the steep streets of the Chiado among thousands of cheering people.⁴

Celeste Caeiro worked in a restaurant on Rua Braamcamp that turned one year old that day; it never opened, and the carnations bought for the women customers were given to the women on the staff.¹³ Celeste came down to the Baixa with her bunch of flowers. By the Chaimite armoured cars, a soldier asked her for a cigarette. She did not smoke, and gave him a carnation, which he put in the barrel of his rifle.¹⁴

Accounts disagree about the exact spot — the start of Rua do Carmo, the corner with Rua Garrett, the Rossio. They agree on the rest: the gesture was repeated across the city and gave the revolution its name.

Marcelo Caetano had been here since the small hours: at five in the morning the director of the political police had telephoned him — “Mr President, the Revolution is out in the streets!” (Senhor Presidente, a Revolução está na rua!) — and advised him to take refuge in the GNR barracks.⁴ According to Jofre Alves’s chronology, it was Maria de Lurdes Rocha, head of cleaning and laundry at the barracks, who hurriedly made up five rooms for the besieged government.¹⁰

The column arrived at about 12:30 and surrounded the barracks; the crowd filled the square and the streets around it. At around 14:30, Rádio Clube Português broadcast an MFA communiqué announcing the siege, “now read by a woman”, Clarisse Guerra.⁹ At 15:10 Maia gave ten minutes for the surrender; at 15:25 a Chaimite fired bursts at the top of the façade. At 16:00 an emissary from General Spínola arrived, and Caetano agreed to surrender — “so that power does not fall into the street” (assim o poder não cai na rua) — provided it was to a general officer.⁵

Spínola entered the barracks late in the afternoon. At 18:30 Salgueiro Maia had the Chaimite “Bula” backed in through the main gate, and it took Caetano and two ministers to the MFA command post at Pontinha.⁹¹¹

Now we go back in time. Here, on Rua Capelo, stood the studios of Rádio Renascença. It was from here that, at 00:20 on 25 April, the programme Limite broadcast “Grândola, Vila Morena” (Grândola, swarthy town), by José Afonso: the second signal, the one that told the Movement’s units that operations were under way and there was no turning back.⁶

The song first chosen had been “Venham Mais Cinco” (Let five more come), but it was banned at Renascença; it was the journalist Carlos Albino, one of the makers of Limite, who suggested “Grândola”. The announcer Leite de Vasconcelos recorded a reading of the first verse, which went out before the song, without knowing what it was for.⁷

Taking the political police headquarters was not part of the MFA’s plan. Throughout the day, the crowd gathered here at the door, demanding surrender. Early in the evening, when Caetano had already surrendered, DGS agents fired from the windows on the people in the street: Fernando Carvalho Giesteira, aged 18, José James Harteley Barneto, 38, João Guilherme Rego Arruda, 20, and Fernando Luís Barreiros dos Reis, 23, were killed. Dozens were wounded, and it was never established who fired.¹²⁸

The DGS did not surrender until the following morning. On the wall, a plaque remembers the four names; the first was put up in 1980 by a group of citizens.¹⁵