O Meu Diário de Coimbra

You say you want a revolution?

It is Dia da Liberdade (Freedom Day) in Portugal — time to celebrate the revolution.

On April 25th, 1974, the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), a group of elite military officers, brought down the rightwing authoritarian regime that had governed the country for 41 years. It was called Revolução dos Cravos (The Carnation Revolution, named ostensibly after the flowers citizen offered soldiers, those loyal to the government, who didn’t fire on them on that April day). It was largely non-violet, as were many flower, fruit, and color revolutions in Europe during the last 40 years or so — Velvet in Czechoslovakia (1989), Rose in Georgia (2003), Orange in Ukraine (2004), Tulip in Kyrgyzstan (2005), another Velvet in Armenia (2018). The revolutions in the Baltics — Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia (1987-1990 ) — were called, and how wonderful is this? — “The Singing” Revolution. In Yugoslavia in 2000, it was the “Bulldozer Revolution,” also largely peaceful, that brought down Slobodan Milosevic. (The story goes a bulldozer operator called Joe turned his vehicle over at the national television station, blocking its entrance, then broke through the police lines and took over the airwaves to call for Milosevic’s ouster. Compare this Joe to our own “Joe the Plumber,” of arguably blessed memory, and you start to see why we can’t have nice things anymore — our regular Joes are posers.