Joy Extends to all

The image reproduced here is of my father outside his car on Avenida Manuel da Maia (near IST), reflecting the joy of the April 25th revolution. If there were a need for a caption, one word would suffice – freedom.
FERNANDO ANTUNES*

THERE ARE THOSE WHO BELIEVE that “a picture is worth a thousand words” or that “a picture says it all.” For others, there are words that speak more than a thousand images (“everything is worth it / if the soul is not small”).
Photography is not unprecedented. The story can be told in a nutshell: in 1977
a photographic exhibition was held at the Mercado do Povo (Belém) to commemorate the 3rd anniversary of April 25, covering the period between October 5, 1910, and the 1st of October 1910 and May 1, 1974. This exhibition gave rise to the album
“From Resistance to Liberation” by Editora Mil Dias. The image is
on page 131, and the caption reads: “Joy extends to all.”
Some say that this first May Day was the biggest popular demonstration
in Portugal’s history. There was no longer any fear, censorship, or repression…
The protagonist of the photo was a Beirão from a village in Proença-a-Nova,
living in Lisbon (Campolide neighborhood) since 1958. Francisco Antunes Vaz
(1925-2003) personally known personalities such as Mário Soares, Salgado Zenha, Baptista Bastos, Raul Rego, etc. He was a Manuel de Brito (founder of the legendary Galeria 111) and a driver for the CGTP.
After all, on that distant day, the man outside the car in the Alameda area had plenty of reasons to be cheerful – he was 48 years old and had just witnessed the overthrow of the Estado Novo, which had ruled the country for 48 years!
48 years!… I can perfectly imagine him shouting at the top of his lungs, “MFA, MFA,” “Freedom,” and “The people united will never be defeated.”
Long live May 1st! April 25th always!

• A25A member