25th of April Monday!

[Friend from Barquinha]

Just a quick reminder that 25th of April (Monday) is a big, big day in the Portuguese calendar: the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in 1974. So be prepared for many things to be closed (it's a stat holiday), and for large gatherings, many with cultural activities attached, in pretty much every town and village. It will not be an ordinary weekday, that's for sure.

For those not that knowledgeable about the Carnation Revolution, here's some background:

This is one of the best shorter videos I've seen about the period:

For those at home, and interested, with more time, this on-the-spot reporting from Thames, a UK network, is riveting:

Boa festa!

 

[Wendy Werneth]

Thanks for posting this! I'm preparing to give a tour of Lisbon tomorrow to a group of tourists, and the Thames report was really helpful for my research.

 

[peregrina2000]

I have a million things to do today but couldn’t resist watching the Thames video. Excellent, amazing real-time reporting.

Does anyone know the location of the large secret police facility that the cameras went through soon after the Navy took it over? I wonder what happened to all the contents and if the building is still being used. I have several Portuguese friends who have been able to see the records kept on them and their families during the dictatorship. They said it was really an incredible experience, to see their own dossiers.

I know that one old political prison has been turned into a museum of the Resistance. It is small, but very much worth a visit, IMO. Museum of Liberty and Resistance, right across from the Cathedral. I have always been impressed. how Portugal has so clearly ”taken the bull by the horns,” and told the historical facts in a straightforward way.

Museu do Aljube

Museu do Aljube

www.museudoaljube.pt

Thanks so much for posting this, @Friend from Barquinha!

 

[Wendy Werneth]

Does anyone know the location of the large secret police facility that the cameras went through soon after the Navy took it over? I wonder what happened to all the contents and if the building is still being used.

I just looked it up, and it seems it was at Rua de António Maria Cardoso 22 in Chiado and has since been turned into luxury housing. I´ll have to look for it next time I´m in that area.

 

[WalkingJane]

Just a quick reminder that 25th of April (Monday) is a big, big day in the Portuguese calendar: the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in 1974. So be prepared for many things to be closed (it's a stat holiday), and for large gatherings, many with cultural activities attached, in pretty much every town and village. It will not be an ordinary weekday, that's for sure.

For those not that knowledgeable about the Carnation Revolution, here's some background:

This is one of the best shorter videos I've seen about the period:

For those at home, and interested, with more time, this on-the-spot reporting from Thames, a UK network, is riveting:

Boa festa!

In a pre-Camino period of my life, my former husband and I, by simple luck, were on our sailboat, docked at the harbor nearest where all this took place on 25 April, 1974. We had been in the Azores (Portuguese islands) not long before and literally no one would talk with us about politics in any way if there was another Portuguese around. A friend who had emigrated to California and was back in the islands for a visit spoke to us when we were alone to say that he knew of people who had "disappeared" for showing any political interest. The suppression was real, and so was the outburst of free expression. After living in the Azores for a number of years, and 3 in mainland Portugal, following the Caminho in 2018 was a great homecoming for me.

 

[Friend from Barquinha]

I think, from newsreels that I've watched from the day, that also quite a bit of it occurred in the building that's the western part of the government buildings surrounding the big Praça da Comercio down on the waterfront in central downtown Lisboa. And the dealings with the highers-up in the military took place up in military building adjacent to the ruined cathedral at the Largo do Carmo.

And one of the two big places where political prisoners were kept was out past Belem. That one was where the secret police got sent afterwards...Caxias. It is still a prison.

Fort of King Luís I - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There is also what was the more "intense," if you can call it that, prison up in the fortress in Peniche, on the Atlantic Coast. We visited there a couple of years ago, and they were creating a museum to commemorate its significance, which has since opened. We stayed in a small, older hotel on the waterfront there, and they had a panoramic photograph showing all the people waiting at the gates for the prisoners to be released after April 25. It was an amazing photo! Apparently many families actually moved to, and settled in, Peniche to support their family members who had been incarcerated. The town has real significance for many Portuguese.

Homepage EN - National Museum of Resistance and Freedom

www.museunacionalresistencialiberdade-peniche.gov.pt

For those who are curious for more info about the background and the happenings of the April 25 revolution, these are good:

1/ A recent Netflix production, in Portuguese but with subtitles, giving a story about pre-revolution doings in the Alentejo, supposedly involving the CIA and the Portuguese communists...fictional, but according to reviews, fairly realistic...called "Glória"

Watch Glória | Netflix Official Site

Spies, lies and secrets flourish in Glória do Ribatejo, 1968, as a privileged Radio Free Europe engineer plays all the angles of Cold War Portugal.

www.netflix.com

2/ A slightly less recent Portuguese film describing the first night and days of the revolution itself...called "Captains of April"...the term often used for the junior military officers who became the heroes of the day...

April Captains - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

14 Youtube sections--this is the first. The film is somewhat romanticized and a bit over the top for many but also very interesting:

Viva Portugal!

 

[peregrina2000]

There is also what was the more "intense," if you can call it that, prison up in the fortress in Peniche, on the Atlantic Coast. We visited there a couple of years ago, and they were creating a museum to commemorate its significance, which has since opened. We stayed in a small, older hotel on the waterfront there, and they had a panoramic photograph showing all the people waiting at the gates for the prisoners to be released after April 25. It was an amazing photo! Apparently many families actually moved to, and settled in, Peniche to support their family members who had been incarcerated. The town has real significance for many Portuguese.

Thanks for all this fascinating information. Interesting to know that the former political prison in Peniche has also opened as a museum. I was there years and years ago to get the boat to Berlenga (oh so pretty) and I vaguely remember that there was some kind of a plaque indicating its former life as a prison.

 

[Friend from Barquinha]

Here's another interesting one, that I hadn't seen before...

RTP is Radio/Television Portugal, the equivalent of the BBC, CBC, AustBC, PBS...

The title translates as "Contemporary Portraits"...made to commemorate Salgueiro Maia, one of the Captains of April who died quite young--I think in the 80s or 90s. He is widely commemorated. The main square where the market is in Entroncamento, next door to our town, is named after him.

Keep in mind that the colonial wars were contemporary with, and for the Portuguese, very much like the Vietnam war.

And Santarém, where you'll pass through on the central Portuguese caminho, was the place where the April 25 events all started...

This is in Portuguese; you can generate subtitles on Youtube, but they're sometimes not great translations. Still, the Portuguese TV footage from the period is quite fascinating, if the subject interests you...

 

[peregrina2000]

Keep in mind that the colonial wars were contemporary with, and for the Portuguese, very much like the Vietnam war.

I lived in Lisbon in the summer of 1971 for about three months near the Estrela gardens. I was in a girls’ dorm type place while taking a summer language course at the Gulbenkian. We were very close to a military hospital (it‘s still there, but not sure if it’s functioning) and there were very many badly wounded young men, all from the colonial wars. It was hard not to feel a tremendous amount of sadness when we passed by because there was nothing hidden. My Portuguese was very very rudimentary, but I frequently got the gist of conversations expressing opinions about those wars by the young women who lived in the same boarding house. But they were very careful and seemed afraid to say anything outside or where others might hear. What a sad time it was.

 

[Friend from Barquinha]

One more video I just found: long, and somewhat slanted since it was produced by American leftist students covering the period from April 1974 through the turbulent times of 75/76. I think the intro says they made the film between 1976 and 1978.

But fascinating footage--stuff I have never seen before. And all in English or subtitled So it's a really useful record of how the more radical part of the population saw the aftermath of April 25. And very good background on what the situation was, under Salazar. (Disclosure, I've only seen half of it so far; it's an hour and a half!)