2024-04-25 21:41:56
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the dictatorship through the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Lisbon on Thursday. “April 25th, always! Fascism, never once more!” shouted the demonstrators, who carried carnations in their buttonholes or in their hands. “It’s a great happiness to be here,” said Helena Peireira, who was 16 years old at the time. “I experienced it intensely and will remember it for the rest of my life.”
The Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974 ended 48 years of tyranny by the dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, who was succeeded by Marcelo Caetano in 1968. The name of the military uprising, which took place with almost no bloodshed, goes back to the red flowers that cheering people stuck into the soldiers’ rifle barrels. This also marked an end to the colonial wars in Portugal’s African colonies such as Angola and Mozambique.
28-year-old Tiago Farinha came to a Carnation Revolution memorial march for the first time on Thursday – due to the current political situation, he said. The right-wing populist Chega party made significant gains in last month’s parliamentary elections.
On Thursday, a military ceremony with specially restored military vehicles from the time in a large square in the center of Lisbon marked the start of the commemoration of the Carnation Revolution. At the end of the evening, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and his counterparts from the African countries Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe, which became independent following 1974, came together for an event.
1714082698
#Tens #thousands #celebrate #years #Carnation #Revolution #Portugal
