Portuguese remember revolution which brought democracy at 50th anniversary parade

(25 Apr 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lisbon - 25 April 2024
1. Wide of old military armoured car parading and former soldiers saluting
2. Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Prime Minister Luis Montenegro
3. Old armoured car parading
4. SOUNDBITE: (Portuguese) Paulo Simões, 71, Sergeant during 1974 Revolution:
“I am living with a sense of duty fulfilled and for 50 years now. I have two children and in a pedagogical way I tried to instill in them the ideas of freedom, democracy, truth and honesty and I succeeded. Therefore, all of this is the corollary of April 25th.”
5. Wide of exhibition with crowd around
6. Child on top of armoured car holding a carnation
7. SOUNDBITE: (Portuguese) Paulo Nebreiro, 72, Corporal during 1974 Revolution:
“The turnout was fantastic and the thousands and thousands of people who joined in throughout the day to what was happening made our lives easier because they showed the previous regime that there was nothing that could be done. The people were with us.”
8. Veteran waving atop parading military vehicle
9. Crowd applauding
STORYLINE:
A military parade led by Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa took place at Praça do Comércio in the heart of Lisbon on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the military coup that took down one of Europe’s longest dictatorships on April 25, 1974.
Around 1,100 military officials from the Portuguese Navy, Air Force and Army took part in the parade that also included 5 navy ships by the river Tagus and the flyover of several helicopters and planes.
Reenactments in downtown Lisbon of dramatic moments in the 1974 army coup that brought democracy to Portugal were the centerpiece of the landmark event’s 50th anniversary commemorations.
In Lisbon, which was the coup’s epicentre, a column of troops and armoured vehicles arrived in a downtown square in a reenactment of one of the early stages of the uprising, when units took up pre-planned positions at key points in the capital.
Soldiers who took part in the coup fifty years ago, later depicted the insurrectionists' convergence on a paramilitary garrison in a square called Largo do Carmo.
That was where Marcelo Caetano, the Portuguese president at the time of the coup, was holed up and was surrounded by troops and jubilant civilians before surrendering.
Many thousands of people across the country were expected to attend the day's celebrations of the so-called Carnation Revolution, which ended a stifling four-decade dictatorship established by Antonio Salazar.
It also paved the way for Portugal’s 1986 membership of the European Union, then called the European Economic Community.
The turmoil and ensuing political uncertainty in Portugal, a NATO member, caused alarm in Western capitals as the Portuguese Communist Party appeared poised to take power. Moderate parties, however, won at the ballot box.
Thousands of people were expected to take part in an annual afternoon march along the city’s main thoroughfare, the Avenida da Liberdade (Freedom Avenue), to celebrate the milestone event.
People at annual April 25 celebrations commonly carry red carnations, which were plentiful in Portuguese stores and on street stalls in the spring of 1974 and which people stuck in the barrels of the insurrectionists.
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