Remember, remember, the 25th of April
I used to laugh at Portuguese people who would call Brazil, Angola, Mozambique and other smaller territories that used to be part of the Portuguese Empire “former colonies”. Come on, the colonialism has ended a very long time ago, right? Then I realized that African colonies were withdrawn from Portugal in 1974 and Macau was given to China in 1999. So now I have to admit the lack of knowledge about the world and keep quiet. In a nutshell Portugal used to be under the authoritarian regime called Estado Novo which was overthrown on 25th of April, 1974, which is the reason why the African colonies became independent. I don’t claim to be a history expert and my knowledge about the revolution is mostly taken from Wikipedia. The revolution that has put an end to the Estado Novo government is called Carnation Revolution because of carnations put in the rifles carried by mutinous military soldiers. My Portuguese acquaintances told me the carnations are symbolizing absence of violence in the rebellion as they are the only “blood” that was shed during it (in reality four civilians were killed and forty-five injured in Lisbon which unfortunately is indeed not that much harm for a coup against a regime).
On the 25th of April me and my wonderful international friends met to watch the parade. The weather was nice so we were dressed in summer clothes and all the girls of our group had red carnations. Probably our motivation to carry them around was more about the beauty of this flower and not necessarily about Portugal’s release from a dictatorship. I think the group with which I spent Portugal’s freedom day was a perfect example of how student exchange can help you to get to know people from around the world. We were 8 people from 7 different countries (Ukraine, Germany, Belgium, Hungary, Poland, USA and 2 people from Austria).
The procession was not a fun one. It seems that different political parties and unions are using the opportunity to show their demands to the government through this parade. There were groups of people with posters, flags and picket signs passing at a very slow pace through Avenida da Liberdade. They were often chanting “25 de Abril sempre! Fascismo nunca mais!” [25th of April always! Fascism never again!]. We were joking that maybe we should join a group of people with rainbow flags because at least we know what kind of rights and ideas they are representing.
After some time we left the parade and went to watch sunset at the Santa Catarina viewpoint. Kevin (the guy from US) bought 2 large bottles of beer and one of them exploded. My assumption is they put it into the freezer before selling. A weird looking Portuguese man started complaining about the explosion so much that we had to move away from where we were sitting. The alternative title of this post is “watch your bottles!”
