Thousands of people celebrated this Thursday in Lisbon the 50th anniversary of the “Carnation Revolution”which ended 48 years of dictatorship in Portugal. The day began with a military parade in a large square in the center of the capital, in which military vehicles of the time restored for the occasion participated and gathered an immense crowd in the afternoon .
“April 25, always! Fascism, never again!” protesters shouted, with red carnations in the hand or in the buttonhole. “It’s a great joy to be here,” he told the agency. AFP Helena Pereira, who was sixteen years old when the uprising took place that changed the history of Portugal.
The regime overthrown in 1974 had been born with a military dictatorship established in 1926. The then Minister of Finance, Antonio Salazar, then led the government between 1932 and 1968, when he was replaced by law professor Marcelo Caetano. “The Carnation Revolution” was named that way because the population, who sided with the coup plotters, distributed spring flowers to some soldiers who stuck them in the barrel of their rifle.
Meanwhile, the country’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, presided over a session in Parliament urging the choice of “imperfect democracy” over dictatorship.. “The revolution only existed because the dictatorship did not know how or did not want to make a transition unlike neighboring Spain.” With his words, the president ended the session in Parliament, which ended with some deputies singing the anthem of the revolution: “Grândola, Vila Morena.”
The rejection of the right
Before him, the representatives of the different political parties spoke in the chamber, where There are 50 deputies from the far-right group Chega, the largest number of seats held by an extremist force of this type in the 50 years of democracy in Portugal.
The leader of Chega, André Ventura, criticized the president who two days earlier declared at a dinner with foreign correspondents that his country should assume responsibility for the damage that colonization caused to other countries.. “Mr. President, he was elected by the Portuguese, he was not elected by the Guineans, by the Brazilians, by the Timorese, he was elected by us!”, stated the leader of Chega, André Ventura.
The leader of the Liberal Initiative (IL), Rui Rocha, whose group is the fourth force in Parliament, also expressed his rejection of the payment of reparations, saying that “history is not a debt, history does not force penitence.” “Whoever declares that obligation as ours, to compensate third parties with our past, attacks the interests of the country, reducing their function to that of spokesperson for imported sectarianisms and, above all, deviating from the commitment to represent the overwhelming majority of the Portuguese” , he assured.
