25th of April: A Revolution in the Atlantic Area of American Hegemony

Abstract

Democratization and revolution are two substantially different ideas, perhaps even antithetical to each other. However, the Portuguese process of change from authoritarianism to democracy entailed both elements, which made it assume special and specific characteristics. In no way can the Portuguese experience be classified as a failed or negative model of democratization, because it was not at all. But it can be said that the military coup generated a real crisis of the state and a diffusion of the centres of power that favored a powerful revolutionary movement of a communist and extreme left character. ¿A popular movement? There is no doubt about it. Just as the counterrevolutionary tide unleashed in the “hot summer” of 1975 cannot be described in any other way.

The Revolución de los Claveles was part of a general process of change and democratization, but with original characteristics. Democratizing process converges with the revolutionary and decolonizing processes. But, without a doubt, the most characteristic of the process was its geopolitical dimension, as it took place in a founding member country of NATO and strongly dependent on the Western and Atlantic context. In the end, the revolutionary tensions ended up being appeased with the triumph of the democratic legitimacy emanating from elections, to which, without a doubt, the Atlantic-Western framework in which Portugal was inserted was not alien. In other words, although the Portuguese process was eminently an internal political process of change, the international context ended up being an essential conditioning factor for its outcome in terms of multiparty liberal democracy.