The 25th of April was the best thing that happened to Portugal | megaphone
Last January 12th, Thursday, there was a demonstration, in Rato (Lisbon), in front of the headquarters of the Socialist Party with the aim of demonstrating the displeasure with the current Government of absolute majority. Among several chants, loose words and constant criticism, there was a poster that, despite having only appeared discreetly in the reports and in the photos that recorded the moment, generated discussion on social networks. The poster I am referring to contained the following message: “The 25th of April was Portugal’s greatest disgrace.”
Well, first of all, and perhaps even comically, it is worth mentioning that the individual who produced this poster was scandalously mistaken in the tone of the demonstration. The English language has an interactive expression for people who appear on temporary occasions well dressed and unaware of the context in which they are inserted: “overdressed”. It is a case to say that this citizen was “super protesting”.
While the majority criticized the immobilist and notoriously insufficient action of the Government in relation to the crisis that Portugal – and Europe, of course – faces and the successive mistakes of foundry that the Socialist Party has committed to the highest charges of the Government, this citizen decided to take on his hands the heavy task of criticizing the democratic system in which he lives – a system that gives him complete freedom to proclaim such discontent.
As a 22-year-old young man, it is mathematically clear that I did not live through the Revolution of April 25, 1974. I am not old enough, therefore, to be a revolutionary, and that is just as well – not because I am against revolutionaries, but because their need to exist supported the lack of freedom; considered the subjugation of an entire people to a dictatorial regime.
As Miguel Esteves Cardoso wrote in his book My Adventures in the Portuguese Republic: “I was lucky enough to experience a good revolution, which gave me back the freedoms that the previous counter-revolution had taken away from me, but even so, I didn’t like it. I hope I never see a revolution again in my lifetime. It’s a lot of confusion.”
My generation was lucky to inherit only April’s values and not April’s struggle; my generation was lucky not to live in the dictatorship, only to study it and hear about it through the older members of the family: we are lucky not to be revolutionaries, because I doubt that we wanted to be. The lyricism and romanticization of suffering looks good in books, poetry, music, however, in the bodies of those who effectively suspended with the dictatorship, only suffering was left without verses or metaphors.
Portugal was a backward country, without freedom, without economic development, with terrible literacy and education rates, with undignified housing conditions for the majority of the population, without relevant scientific innovation for the improvement of health care. Not to mention the ultra-conservative oppression – encouraged by the Estado Novo – which makes the simple act of loving someone of the same sex dangerous, or the emancipation of women in terms of reproductive rights and very meager sexual health.
The 25th of April, although in the years that followed it generated instability — natural to any post-revolutionary period —, it brought a new world to Portugal. A cosmopolitan, developed world, open to investment, competition, the world. We stopped being “proudly alone” to be free companions for everyone who wanted to have a relationship with us. And that motto is in all of us to this day. April is also in this chronicle; it is in those who disagree with it; it’s in whoever decides to write their own chronicle.
It is now up to my generation to ensure that we do not go backwards. There is only one task left, albeit a herculean one: to defend democracy and freedom. As Francisco Sá Carneiro wrote in 1973: “There is, therefore, no common good that can legitimize the freedom of the person: the good of all is that each one, without exception, can fulfill himself in the freedom of being, without the which there is no man.” And without freedom there is no humanity.