In Europe

FATHER -in-law recently took a bad fall, in a shop, one of those silly accidents that can finish off the elderly, and now he's in hospital. He may recover, but it could also go badly, I don't know. We're standing vigil by his bed, the phone is always within arm's reach, you probably know how it is, those strange days full of memories.
    ‘I was born in Mafra, in central Portugal. My father was a clerk, my mother worked as a switchboard operator at the post office. Like all red-blooded Portuguese boys, I ended up in the army after secondary school and spent six years in our former colony of Mozambique. That was in the 1960s. I worked at the commander's office, and that's where I met my wife. She was Governor Almeida's daughter, and also his private secretary. I often helped out as an interpreter, and that's how we got to know each other.
    ‘When the colonial wars began I was sent to Angola as an infantry captain: ambushes, skirmishes, hopeless. In Mozambique I had simply done my job as a professional military man, I hadn't thought about it much. But in Angola that all changed. My comrades and I ended up in the filthiest situations, and we realised more and more that this was not going to solve the problem of the Angolan rebellion. We, the young officers, had endless conversations, and we always arrived at the same conclusion: colonialism was a misguided system, and also completely outdated. We were being asked to buck the tide of history. Portugal would never, ever win this war.
    ‘It's no coincidence that the Carnation Revolution was largely started by officers of that same generation. We had all attended the same classes,gone to the same boarding schools, carried on the same discussions. The conspiracy itself was put together within a few months, but only after ten years of thinking and talking.
    ‘In 1970 I was sent back to Portugal, as a major on the general staff. Salazar died that same year, but he had appointed his protégé and ally Marcel Caetano as prime minister in 1968. Our country was as poor as could be. Child mortality was four times as high as in France, a third of all Portuguese people couldn't read or write. Some villages were inhabited only by children and old people: millions of people had emigrated to Brazil or the United States. So, if only for economic reasons, the burden of the colonial war was too much for the country to bear. I saw it happening right before my eyes. I was involved in the logistics, I had to draw up the budgets for the purchase of arms and munitions. I did it precisely according to the norms, but I noticed that it was becoming more difficult all the time. For example, we had to order eleven million units of meat for the troops. The government could only come up with two million. We needed so many rifles, and so much ammunition. We received only a tenth of it. It was as though the leaders in Lisbon were telling the soldiers: “Go throw stones, try saving yourself that way!”
    ‘So the army was the seedbed for the Portuguese revolution, from the moment when the military top brass was forced to admit boys from the lower and middle classes to officer rank. I went through that process myself; it started with my dissatisfaction as a commissioned officer, and I ended up as a revolutionary. We were, after all, confronted each day with the mistakes and stupidities of the regime in Lisbon and with the cruelty of that senseless war in Angola. That was the background of our Captains’ Movement. It was the only way we could save our lives, and save our country as well.
    ‘In February 1974, General António de Spínola, the army's real rising star, published a book in which he called for an end to be put to the war as quickly as possible. One month later the Caetano government stripped him of all his functions. It just so happened that we were all in Portugal around that time. That was an exceptionally favourable coincidence, and it established the moment for our revolution. In March 1974 we drafted our political programme. Then we decided to carry out the coup, Otelo de Carvalho, Vasco Lourenço and myself. The date we chosewas 25 April, in the same week that the red carnations began blooming in the fields. That is how the Carnation Revolution was born.
    ‘Organising a military coup is extremely complicated. We started by setting up the Armed Forces Movement, the MFA. We held big meetings, and all the army units sent representatives. My job was to maintain contacts with the air