The Carnation Revolution. Causes, Process and Consequences

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - Region: Western Europe, grade: 1,3, , language: English, abstract: Nobody could have thought when on Thursday, April 25, 1974 in Lisbon, shortly after midnight the catholic Rádio Renascença played the song Grandola Vila Morena, it would lead to such consequences. The song was the signal for the young military officers of the Movimento das Forcas Armadas (MFA) to carry out the plans for a coup d¿état. Only minor resistance from the security police occurred, so that by late morning the crowds were flooding the streets, cheering the soldiers, and putting carnations in the barrels of the rifles. The coup was efficiently and successfully and still on the same day, the deposed dictator Marcello Caetano surrendered to the new military leaders and already the next day flew into exile. This coup d¿état marked the death of the oldest, over 40 years old dictatorship in Europe, lead by António de Oliveira Salazar (Ferreira, 1986).

On the one hand marked April 25 the beginning of transition to democracy in Portugal and later even lead to a consolidated democracy. On the other hand this day marked the beginning of the third wave of democratization. The fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the breakdown of the Latin American authoritarian regimes followed after Portugal brought the ball rolling. And the snowball effect influenced many other authoritarian regimes in the world to democratize as well. States like Spain, Brazil and Hungary were to follow the example of Portugal.

It is the aim of this paper to analyze what the causes were, that lead to the revolution, how the process of the transition occurred and what the consequences of April 25 were.