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Portugal – Carnation Revolution in 1974
1974 Proof Silver 100 Escudos 32mm (15.00 grams) 0.650 Silver (0.3762 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 604
250 ESCUDOS REPUBLICA·PORTUGUESA·, Value above cross design within circle.
25 DE ABRIL 1974, Design flanked by dates.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
 The Carnation Revolution (Portuguese: Revolução dos Cravos), also known as the 25th of April (Portuguese: 25 de Abril), was initially a 25 April 1974 military coup in Lisbon which overthrew the authoritarian Estado Novo regime. The revolution began as a coup organised by the Armed Forces Movement (Portuguese: Movimento das Forças Armadas, MFA), composed of military officers who opposed the regime, but it was soon coupled with an unanticipated, popular civil resistance campaign. The revolution led to the fall of the Estado Novo and the withdrawal of Portugal from its African colonies.
Its name arose from the fact that almost no shots were fired, and Celeste Caeiro offered carnations to the soldiers when the population took to the streets to celebrate the end of the dictatorship; other demonstrators followed suit, and carnations were placed in the muzzles of guns and on the soldiers’ uniforms. In Portugal, 25 April is a national holiday (Portuguese: Dia da Liberdade, Freedom Day) which commemorates the revolution.
Portugal had been governed by an authoritarian dictatorship, the Estado Novo or New State (which was considered fascist), for over four decades. The revolution changed the government to a democracy and produced enormous social, economic, territorial, demographic and political changes. These changes evolved during (and after) a two-year transitional period known as Processo Revolucionário Em Curso (PREC, Ongoing Revolutionary Process), which was characterised by social turmoil and power disputes between left- and right-wing political forces.
Despite repeated radio appeals by the revolutionaries asking the population to stay home, thousands of Portuguese citizens descended on the streets and mingled with the military insurgents. The military-led coup returned democracy to Portugal, ending the unpopular Colonial War (in which thousands of Portuguese citizens had been conscripted into military service) and replacing the Estado Novo regime and its secret police (which curbed civil liberties and political freedom). It began as a protest by Portuguese Armed Forces captains against a law: the Dec Lei nº 353/73 of 1973.
A group of low-ranking Portuguese officers organised as the Armed Forces Movement (MFA, Movimento das Forças Armadas), including some who had fought pro-independence guerrillas in the Portuguese Empire’s territories in Africa, and overthrew the Estado Novo regime which had ruled Portugal since the 1930s. Portugal’s new regime pledged to end the colonial wars, and began negotiations with the African independence movements. By the end of 1974, Portuguese troops were withdrawn from Portuguese Guinea and the latter was a UN member state. This was followed by the independence of Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola in 1975. The Carnation Revolution also led to Portugal’s withdrawal from East Timor in south-east Asia. These events prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens from Portugal’s African territories (mostly from Angola and Mozambique), creating over a million Portuguese refugees – the retornados.
Although PIDE (the Estado Novo’s political police) killed four people before surrendering, the revolution was unusual because the revolutionaries did not use violence to achieve their goals. Holding red carnations (Portuguese: cravos), many people joined revolutionary soldiers on the streets of Lisbon in apparent joy and audible euphoria. Red is the colour of socialism and communism, the ideological tendencies of many anti-Estado Novo insurgents. It was the end of the Estado Novo (the longest-lived authoritarian regime in Western Europe), and the dissolution of the Portuguese Empire. In the aftermath of the revolution, a new constitution was drafted, censorship was prohibited, free speech was permitted, political prisoners were released and the Portuguese overseas territories in sub-Saharan Africa were granted independence. East Timor was also offered independence, shortly before it was invaded by Indonesia.
History
At the beginning of the 1970s, nearly a half-century of authoritarian rule weighed on Portugal. After the 28 May 1926 coup d’état, Portugal implemented an authoritarian regime incorporating social Catholicism and integralism. In 1933, the regime was recast and renamed Estado Novo (New State). António de Oliveira Salazar was prime minister until 1968, when he had a stroke. Salazar was replaced in September 1968 by Marcello Caetano, who was deposed during the revolution.
Portugal’s Estado Novo government was initially tolerated by its NATO partners due to its anti-communist stance. Elections were rarely contested; the opposition used the limited political freedoms allowed during the brief election period to protest against the regime, withdrawing their candidates before the election to deny the regime political legitimacy. In 1958, General Humberto Delgado (a former member of the regime) stood against the regime’s presidential candidate, Américo Tomás, and refused to allow his name to be withdrawn.
Tomás won the election amidst claims of widespread electoral fraud. Immediately after the election, the Salazar government abandoned the practice of popularly electing the president and gave the task to the regime-loyal National Assembly. During Caetano’s time in office, his attempts at minor political reform were obstructed by Salazarist elements in the regime. The hardliners were supported by Tomás, who was unwilling to give Caetano as free a hand as Salazar had. The Estado Novo’s political police, the PIDE (Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, later the DGS, Direcção-Geral de Segurança and originally the PVDE, Polícia de Vigilância e Defesa do Estado), persecuted opponents of the regime, who were often tortured, imprisoned or killed.
The international community disliked the Portuguese regime. The Cold War was near its peak; Western- and Eastern-bloc states were supporting guerrillas in the Portuguese colonies, attempting to bring them under American or Soviet influence. The overseas policy of the Portuguese government, despite the desire of many colonial residents to remain under Portuguese rule, led to an abrupt decolonisation after the Carnation Revolution and the fall of the regime in April 1974. For the Portuguese rulers, the overseas empire was a matter of national interest.
Aftermath
After the coup, power was held by the National Salvation Junta (a military junta). Portugal experienced a turbulent period, known as the Processo Revolucionário Em Curso (Ongoing Revolutionary Process).
The conservative forces surrounding Spinola and the MFA radicals initially confronted each other (covertly or overtly), and Spinola was forced to appoint key MFA figures to senior security positions. Right-wing military figures attempted an unsuccessful counter-coup, resulting in Spinola’s removal from office. Unrest within the MFA between leftist forces (often close to the Communist Party) and more-moderate groups (often allied the Socialists) eventually led to the group’s splintering and dissolution.
This stage of the PREC lasted until the 25 November 1975 pro-communist coup, followed by a successful counter-coup by pro-democracy moderates, and was marked by constant friction between liberal-democratic forces and leftist-communist political parties.[24] Portugal’s first free election was held on 25 April 1975 to write a new constitution replacing the Constitution of 1933, which prevailed during the Estado Novo era. Another election was held in 1976 and the first constitutional government, led by centre-left socialist Mário Soares, took office.
Decolonisation
Main articles: Angolan Civil War, Mozambican Civil War, Indonesian invasion of East Timor, Lusophobia, and Guinea-Bissau War of Independence
Before April 1974, the intractable Portuguese Colonial War in Africa consumed up to 40 percent of the Portuguese budget. Although part of Guinea-Bissau became independent de facto in 1973, Bissau (its capital) and the large towns were still under Portuguese control. In Angola and Mozambique, independence movements were active in a few remote areas from which the Portuguese Army had retreated and their economies were booming.
A consequence of the Carnation Revolution was the sudden withdrawal of Portuguese administrative and military personnel from its overseas colonies. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese Africans returned to Portugal. These people-workers, small businesspeople, and farmers-often had deep roots in the former colonies and became known as the retornados.
Angola began a decades-long civil war which involved the Soviet Union, Cuba, South Africa, and the United States. Millions of Angolans died in the aftermath of independence due to armed conflict, malnutrition and disease. After a brief period of stability, Mozambique became embroiled in a civil war which left it one of the poorest nations in the world. The country’s situation has improved since the 1990s, and multi-party elections have been held.
East Timor was invaded by Indonesia, and would be occupied until 1999. There were an estimated 102,800 conflict-related deaths from 1974 to 1999 (about 18,600 killings and 84,200 deaths from hunger and illness), most of which occurred during the Indonesian occupation.
After a long period of one-party rule, Guinea-Bissau experienced a brief civil war and a difficult transition to civilian rule in 1998. Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe avoided civil war during the decolonisation period, and established multi-party political systems by the early 1990s. Macau remained a Portuguese colony until 1999, when China took control in a joint declaration and enacted a “one country, two systems” policy similar to that of Hong Kong.
  Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic (Portuguese: República Portuguesa), is a country on the Iberian Peninsula, in Southwestern Europe. It is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, being bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east. The Portugal-Spain border is 1,214 km (754 mi) long and considered the longest uninterrupted border within the European Union. The republic also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous regions with their own regional governments.
 The territory of modern Portugal has been continuously settled, invaded and fought over since prehistoric times. The Pre-Celts, Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians and the Romans were followed by the invasions of the Visigothic and the Suebi Germanic peoples, who were themselves later invaded by the Moors. These Muslim peoples were eventually expelled during the Christian Reconquista. Portuguese nationality can be traced back to the creation of the First County of Portugal, in 868. In 1139, Afonso Henriques was proclaimed King of Portugal, thus firmly establishing Portuguese independence, under the Portuguese House of Burgundy.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, under the House of Aviz, which took power following the 1383-85 Crisis, Portugal expanded Western influence and established the first global empire, becoming one of the world’s major economic, political and military powers. During this time, Portuguese explorers pioneered maritime exploration in the Age of Discovery, notably under royal patronage of Prince Henry the Navigator and King João II, with such notable discoveries as Vasco da Gama’s sea route to India (1497-98), Pedro Álvares Cabral’s discovery of Brazil (1500), and Bartolomeu Dias’s reaching of the Cape of Good Hope. Portugal monopolized the spice trade during this time, under royal command of the Casa da Índia, and the Portuguese Empire expanded with military campaigns led in Asia, notably under Afonso de Albuquerque, who was known as the “Caesar of the East”.
The destruction of Lisbon in a 1755 earthquake, the country’s occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, the independence of Brazil (1822), and the Liberal Wars (1828-1834), all left Portugal crippled from war and diminished in its world power. After the 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy, the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic was established, later being superseded by the “Estado Novo” right-wing authoritarian regime. Democracy was restored after the Portuguese Colonial War and the Carnation Revolution in 1974. Shortly after, independence was granted to all its colonies and East Timor, with the exception of Macau, which was handed over to China in 1999. This marked the end of the longest-lived European colonial empire, leaving a profound cultural and architectural influence across the globe and a legacy of over 250 million Portuguese speakers today.
Portugal is a developed country with a high-income advanced economy and high living standards. It is the 5th most peaceful country in the world, maintaining a unitary semi-presidential republican form of government. It has the 18th highest Social Progress in the world, putting it ahead of other Western European countries like France, Spain and Italy. It is a member of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations, the European Union, the eurozone, OECD, NATO and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. Portugal is also known for having decriminalized the usage of all common drugs in 2001, the first country in the world to do so. However, the sale and distribution of these drugs is still illegal in Portugal.
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