CELESTE CAEIRO
“The soldier asked me for a cigarette. I didn’t smoke, I never have. For a few seconds, I wondered how I could make it up to that boy, fighting for us, on top of that car. He was giving me something good, but I had nothing to give him. Without thinking, I took a carnation from my bouquet and offered it to him.
It never occurred to me that because of that, April 25th would be known worldwide as the Carnation Revolution.
That boy was never found. Every time I think of that day, I cry. I was 40 years old, looking after my mother and daughter. I lived in Chiado and loved the city where I was born. I still do.
I’m 90, and my hearing and my eyesight are awful. I get very emotional talking about this day. The doctors say it’s terrible for me. I’ll ask my granddaughter to tell you the rest of the story. Long live April 25! If we let it die, we’ll have to do another.”

CAROLINA
Carolina is 23 years old, has a master’s degree in law, and wants to be a magistrate. She lives in Alcobaça.
“My school books always referenced the Carnation Revolution. When I received the textbooks every year, I immediately looked for those pages. I knew that the teachers would bring it up, even once a year, and that I would, once again, remain silent. Despite my pride, I never said at school that my grandmother named the revolution. I really believe that gesture was the work of fate.
My grandmother Celeste was the daughter of a Spanish woman from Badajoz and an unknown father. She grew up in Casa Pia with two older brothers. My great-grandmother had difficulty leaving her children there, whom she visited regularly. She never abandoned them.
My grandmother was the school principal’s favorite girl. She studied nursing, but as she had lung problems, she could not practice. However, Miss Celeste was always independent. She never married my grandfather. When my grandfather misbehaved when my mother was three, they separated. To console my grandmother, I wanted to give her a gold chain and other things. But my grandmother didn’t care about the gifts or him. Alone, she continued to look after her daughter and mother.
In April 1974, she was working in a restaurant, which was one year old on April 25th. The carnations were to be given to customers, but as the restaurant was closed, the waitresses kept the flowers.
Then came the happy episode at the beginning of Rua do Carmo. A photographer (Carlos Gil) witnessed the scene and published the picture. The next day, my grandmother went to work. Her colleagues had already called Crónica Feminina, who immediately went to interview her.
This year, that episode will be retraced. My grandmother would have liked a plaque to mark the spot—something to say that it was there that the name Carnation Revolution was born—or even a tiny statue.
Talking about April 25th makes her very emotional. She gets melancholy at times like this. We believe that the stroke she suffered shortly after the April 25th celebrations had something to do with the emotions she felt. However, she has been largely ignored by everyone.
There are no photos of my grandmother when she was 40. In the Chiado fire, she lost her house and all her belongings, and the photographs burned. She’s been living in a building falling apart near Avenida da Liberdade for years. She could live with her daughter and granddaughter in Alcobaça, but my grandmother, a native of Lisbon, can’t be taken away from Lisbon.
My grandmother, who still pays close attention to the news, worries about the country. Contrary to habit, she went to bed early on the night of the last elections. “I don’t want to see this misery.” I was taught from an early age that the most important value is freedom.”
Testimonial collected by Alexandra Tavares-Teles, Diário de Notícias, April 23, 2024

From 5 years ago–the 45th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution–April of 2019

Celeste became known as Celeste dos Cravos for having distributed the carnations that gave color and the same name to the Carnation Revolution, the April Revolution, April 25, 1974.

  Born to a Galician mother, she was the youngest of three siblings and almost never knew her father, who abandoned them. In 1974, Celeste Caeiro was 40 years old and living in a room she had rented in Chiado. She worked in a restaurant on Rua Braancamp in Lisbon.

  The restaurant, Franjinhas, was Lisbon's first self-service restaurant and had opened a year earlier, precisely on April 25, 1973. It was celebrating its first anniversary on that day, and the management was planning to offer flowers to the ladies and a Port to the gentlemen. On that day, however, as the coup d'état was underway, the restaurant didn't open. The manager told the staff to go home and gave them the carnations to take with them, as they couldn't be distributed to the customers. They each took a bunch of red and white carnations that were in the storeroom.

  On returning home, Celeste took the metro to Rossio and headed for Chiado, where she immediately came across the revolutionaries' tanks. Approaching one of the tanks, she asked what was going on, to which a soldier replied, "We're going to Carmo to stop Marcelo Caetano. This is a revolution!". The soldier also asked her for a cigarette, but Celeste didn't have one.

  Celeste wanted to buy them something to eat, but all the stores were closed. So she gave them the only thing she had to give them: carnations, saying, "If you want to take them, a carnation can be given to anyone." The soldier accepted and put the flower in the flowerpot. The soldier accepted and put the flower in the barrel of his rifle. Celeste went on giving carnations to the soldiers she met, from Chiado to the foot of the Church of the Martyrs.

Today, sitting on a bench in Largo do Carmo, the same place where 45 years ago she watched, with “endless joy,” the triumph of Salgueiro Maia’s troops and the arrest of Marcelo Caetano, she explains that “A soldier asked me for a cigarette, but I didn’t have one. I’ve never smoked. I gave him a carnation, which he put in the barrel of his rifle. A colleague did the same, then the others imitated us. I gave him all the cloves.” “It was the happiest day of my life. It was very beautiful.”

 And if Celeste had smoked, she would have given out cigarettes, and if Franjinhas hadn't turned one year old, there would have been no carnations, and today, without these circumstances and coincidences, we would perhaps have a G3 rifle as a symbol instead of the colourful red flower that symbolizes the spirit of that day and that coup d'état that overthrew the dictatorial regime that had stifled Portugal for almost half a century, freeing Portugal as well as Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe and Timor, allowing these peoples to become nations and follow their own independent course.

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