This is the dawn I was awaiting,

the first day, whole and clean,

when we emerge from the night and the silence.

And freed, we inhabit the substance of time.

– Sophia de Mello Breyner, “25th of April”

                I spent my childhood and part of my adolescence under the dictatorship of the “Estado Novo.” And I was going on16 when the 25th of April 1974 occurred. A high school student, I lived then with my family on the island of Terceira – and I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was during a Gymnastics class (today called Physical Education) that Monteiro Pais, teacher of that subject, broke the news to us.

                “There’s been a revolution in Lisbon!”

                Unfamiliar as we were with revolutions, we resumed hurdling over the plinth in the high school gym.

                Angra do Heroísmo, deep in its placid historical slumber, was a traditionalist and conservative city then. Oppression, intolerance and underdevelopment hung in the air. Insipid customs and public virtues. Minds obsessed with proper morals. Early on, I encountered strict discipline and repression in primary school, with the application of “corrective power”: swats with a ruler, spanking, slapping, whipping, beating. and other modes of corporal punishment; great respect for the authorities, and those dour gentlemen on Rua do Palácio who, we were told, could not be trusted: PIDE [Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado] agents. But the greatest threat looming over our teenaged shoulders was without a doubt the Colonial War in Africa.

                When Marcelo Caetano succeeded the ailing Salazar in 1968, my father, a diligent public servant with four stripling sons, initially pinned his hopes on the so-called “Marcelista spring.” But he soon realized that the change was just more of the same, as the above-cited war raged on.

                We knew through the grapevine that some pockets of resistance existed in Angra: clandestine meetings at José Orlando Bretão’s home, and gatherings with Emanuel Félix; lectures, exhibits, theater, concerts, book publishing, the “Glacial” generation, and young authors roiling the waters of dull routine; they conspired in secret at the Portugália and Chá Barrosa cafés; you could listen to Rádio Portugal Livre surreptitiously if you pressed the speaker up to your ear, because back then “the walls had ears.” The Rádio Clube de Angra aired the program “Vampiros,” which played banned music by Zeca Afonso, Sérgio Godinho and Adriano Correia de Oliveira. There we could also listen to the amazing weekly commentaries of Padres Coelho de Sousa and Avelino Soares. And there were Padre Laudalino Moniz’s courageous homilies at the Conceição church, always monitored closely by a member of the PIDE. The most progressive sectors of the Church, imbued with the lofty ideas emanating from the Second Vatican Council, made themselves felt. And I sinned in thought, word, deed and omission, reading José Vilhena and listening to a worn 45 RPM recording that Albano had lent me of the erotic voice of Jane Birkin singing “Je t’aime, moi non plus.”

                The 25th of April came to my rescue at the best possible time: it liberated me and freed me from the war. I joined the celebrations those first days, walking through the streets of Angra, red carnation in hand. We finally knew the color of freedom, and nothing would be the same as before.

                Today the date is only, and almost always, associated with the end of the authoritarian, austere and repressive regime of the Estado Novo, the end of the Colonial War, and the establishment of a democratic government. It is true that from 1974 onward, nomenclatures previously unfamiliar to us started becoming part of Portuguese daily life: freedom of expression, equality of citizens, social justice, free elections, the right to strike – in short, democracy.

                But it is essential not to forget that the Revolution of the 25th of April 1974 represents a fundamental milestone in both the history of 20th century Portugal and the nation’s entire history. With this revolution, not only did an imperial cycle that started with the maritime expansion of the 15th century come to a close, but the path of entry into a new entity called the European Community began. And for Azoreans, democracy has brought us a fundamental and, for the foreseeable future, irreversible victory: politico-administrative autonomy, with which new development possibilities opened up for these islands.

                Anyone who does not know the past risks committing the same errors. And the right to freedom implies the duty of memory. With so much populism and disinformation on the loose, and the extreme right growing visibly, it is necessary to bolster the 25th of April every day, because in fifty years of democracy Portugal has become modernized, but has not developed accordingly. So in times of many and varied crises, it is vital to reclaim our pride and self-esteem, and not let hope die.

P.S.: Obviously we owe a massive debt to the April captains. But to me, the 25th of April’s great hero was Corporal Alves Costa who, on Lisbon’s Rua do Arsenal, refused to obey Loyalist Brigadier Junqueira dos Reis’s order to open fire on Captain Salgueiro Maia. That was a decisive moment.

Originally published in Portuguese as “Do meu 25 de Abril”:

https://graciosadigital.blogspot.com/2024/04/do-meu-25-de-abril-artigo-de-opiniao-de.html