The Caldas uprising: a column marches on Lisbon alone, 16 March 1974

The sky over Caldas da Rainha was grey at midnight, as Friday 15 March 1974 turned into Saturday, when Captain Virgílio Varela, armed, detained the second-in-command of his own regiment. Two other officers, Rocha Neves and Silva Carvalho, helped him take over the headquarters of the 5th Infantry Regiment, known by its initials as RI5. The commanding officer woke up and was arrested as soon as he got out of bed.2 sources2 sources

At four in the morning a column of army lorries passed through the gate: 14 Berliet trucks with Unimogs, GMCs and jeeps, carrying about 30 officers and 200 to 300 sergeants and soldiers. They were commanded by Captain Armando Marques Ramos, then 31. Their orders were to drive to Lisbon and seize the airport.3 sources3 sources

They thought they were late. Units from Lamego in the north, from Mafra, Santarém and Vendas Novas were supposed to be on the roads too, converging on the capital to overthrow the government of Marcelo Caetano. The lorries could manage about 40 kilometres an hour. By six they were on the edge of Lisbon, and there they found out that nobody else had come.3 sources3 sources

Portugal had been a dictatorship since a military coup in May 1926. The Estado Novo, or New State, that António de Oliveira Salazar built on it was authoritarian and repressive: it had a political police, the PIDE, renamed the DGS under Caetano, and censors who read everything the newspapers printed, down to football reports. Marcelo Caetano took over as President of the Council, in effect prime minister, in 1968. His early promise of a gradual opening had stalled by January 1973, when most deputies of the Liberal Wing, a group of reformers in the National Assembly, walked out of it.5 sources5 sources

The regime was also fighting three colonial wars, which began in Angola in 1961, Guinea in 1963 and Mozambique in 1964. By early 1974 the fighting had gone on for thirteen years; in the view of Spínola's biographer, Luís Nuno Rodrigues, the independence movements had by then lost any willingness to negotiate.2 sources2 sources

The captains' revolt began as a professional grievance. In July 1973 a decree let conscript officers with a tour of war service join the regular officer corps after a two-semester course, overtaking graduates of the Military Academy. On 9 September 1973, 136 captains and lieutenants met secretly at Alcáçovas, near Évora. Their movement grew quickly and its aims widened from careers to the war itself, then to the regime.2 sources2 sources

Caldas was involved early. Officers of RI5, 14 of whom were represented at the meeting, organised the movement's second plenary, held on 1 December 1973 in the Casa do Povo, a community hall, in Óbidos. Some 170 to 180 officers attended. The third plenary, in an architect's studio in Cascais on 5 March 1974, drew about 200. There, 111 of those present signed a first political text, “O Movimento, as Forças Armadas e a Nação” (The Movement, the Armed Forces and the Nation).2 sources2 sources

Two generals overshadowed the captains. Francisco da Costa Gomes was Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and António de Spínola, the former governor of Guinea, his deputy. On 22 February 1974 Spínola published Portugal e o Futuro (Portugal and the Future), in which a senior figure of the regime admitted that the wars could not be won by arms and needed a political solution. It was widely read and shook the regime.2 sources2 sources

The government struck first. On 8 March four captains of the movement, Vasco Lourenço among them, were told they were being transferred: two to the Azores, one to Madeira and one to Bragança. The movement spirited two of them away. The next day a fellow officer, Pinto Soares, handed them over at the Lisbon military headquarters, hoping to get the orders cancelled; instead all three were locked up at Trafaria. On 9 March the armed forces were put on strict alert for the first time since 1961.3 sources3 sources

Caetano, pressed by the President of the Republic, Américo Tomás, then summoned the military chiefs to declare their loyalty in public. On 13 March he received Costa Gomes and Spínola, who explained why they would not attend; he told them that in that case they would be dismissed. The next day generals and admirals of all three services gathered at São Bento for a ceremony of solidarity with the government. It went down in history as the Brigada do Reumático, the Rheumatic Brigade.4 sources4 sources

Costa Gomes and Spínola stayed away, and so did the Navy chief, Admiral Tierno Bagulho. All three were dismissed the same day; by one account the two generals were out of office by four in the afternoon. The same day Captain Varela of RI5 told Casanova Ferreira, one of the conspirators, that if the movement did not react he would go out alone with his unit. Casanova Ferreira asked him to wait. Varela kept his men on standby.4 sources4 sources

Plans for some kind of action had been in the air for days. On 11 March Spínola's aide-de-camp suggested to Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho that the movement protest against the generals' ceremony. On 12 March Otelo, Casanova Ferreira, Manuel Monge and others drafted an operations plan at Casanova Ferreira's home. A move first planned for the night of 13 to 14 March was put off. On 15 March Spínola met officers he trusted, and 19 March was mentioned as the date for a coup. A hurried meeting the same day failed to head off a revolt at the special operations training centre in Lamego.6 sources6 sources

That evening, in Correio da Manhã's reconstruction, the plan was confirmed at Manuel Monge's house in Lisbon with Otelo and Casanova Ferreira present. Ramos left at half past nine and drove straight back to Caldas. Whose orders he carried is disputed. The Gazeta das Caldas says the column had an operations order from the movement's military commission. Otelo later said the march went ahead without the approval of the coordinating committee, and that Spínola had asked him, through his aide-de-camp, to “do something”.3 sources3 sources

The rain that soaked the soldiers also played havoc with their radios, and the column drove south with little idea of what was happening elsewhere. The Lamego centre, which had been first to stir, did not move. At Mafra a force set out, drove about 13 kilometres and went back. Vendas Novas would not join, Ramos recalled, and at Santarém the key to the arms store was in the wrong hands.2 sources2 sources

Some three kilometres before the toll gates at Sacavém, Monge and Casanova Ferreira caught up with the column in a Mini. Their news was that it was alone and should go back. Ramos wanted to carry on and take the airport anyway; if things went badly, he argued, they could fly out on two of the planes, to Sweden or anywhere. Monge and Casanova Ferreira persuaded him that at the airport they would be isolated, while in the barracks at Caldas they would be better protected. The column turned round, and the two men went back with it.1 source1 source

Wet, hungry and asking for breakfast, the men were back inside the barracks by about a quarter past eight, or ten o'clock in another account. They shut the gates. Soon the regiment was surrounded by units of the Tomar military region: the 7th Infantry Regiment from Leiria, the Cavalry Practical School from Santarém and, in one account, the 15th Infantry Regiment from Tomar, with riot police, the GNR gendarmerie and agents of the political police, the DGS.4 sources4 sources

The brigadier commanding the siege, named as Serrano in one account, threatened to open fire and cut off the water, electricity and telephones. Townspeople gathered at a careful distance to watch. Inside, the rebels played for time, hoping the attempt would echo across the country and abroad. Several officers later said they never believed fellow soldiers would shoot at them.2 sources2 sources

At about five in the afternoon, after hours of talks, the rebels surrendered. The loyal forces entered the barracks. The officers were gathered in the library, where the brigadier lectured them; sergeants and soldiers were held in the mess hall. The leaders took responsibility and tried to clear their subordinates by saying they had only obeyed orders.3 sources3 sources

About 200 men were arrested. The officers were taken first to a Lisbon barracks; Ramos, Monge, Casanova Ferreira and the others most involved went on to the military prison at Trafaria, across the Tagus from the capital. Most of the rank and file were sent to the army camp at Santa Margarida; within a week, one account says, RI5 was full of new faces.5 sources5 sources

The arrests reached beyond Caldas. On 16 March the GNR surrounded the Military Academy and arrested members of the movement there. João de Almeida Bruno, one of Spínola's officers, escaped arrest at a house in Monte Estoril by minutes, according to the account of the DGS inspector sent to fetch him. He was taken into custody the next day and ended up at Trafaria.3 sources3 sources

The government sent the newspapers a communiqué and banned them from commenting on it. It said the authorities had known that a movement “of ill-defined character and aims” was being prepared, and that attempts to raise other units had failed. It ended on a reassurance.2 sources2 sources

Caetano spoke about the affair on television, reshuffled his government and let himself be seen in public. He dismissed the coup as “irreflexão, talvez ingenuidade”, thoughtlessness, perhaps naivety. On 28 March he gave the last of his fireside television talks, the Conversas em Família, and on 31 March he went to watch Benfica play Sporting.4 sources4 sources

In Caldas itself the local weekly, Gazeta das Caldas, used its editorial of 20 March to distance the town and its people from what had happened and to defend the regime.1 source1 source

For the movement's leaders the march was a near disaster. Vasco Lourenço, one of them, still called it “the disastrous adventure of 16 March” fifty years later, and others feared it could have wrecked everything they had built. Joana de Matos Tornada, whose 2009 book a reviewer called the first systematic study of the coup, reads it differently: in the review's summary, it laid bare the regime's inability to keep order and discipline in the armed forces, and pushed the movement towards an outcome by force from which there was no going back.3 sources3 sources

The captains moved fast. On 18 March Otelo met Vítor Alves and Melo Antunes, who was given the job of drafting a political programme. On 20 March a meeting at Parede concluded that a reasonably well organised military movement would probably win, and decided that every key member should have a shadow, ready to take over if he was arrested.2 sources2 sources

On 24 March the coordinating committee met for the last time, at the home of Captain Candeias Valente. Otelo took charge of the operations plan and Vítor Alves of political direction. The coup was set for the week of 22 to 29 April, and the committee stopped meeting and sending circulars. Ramos blamed poor communications for the failure of 16 March; the movement's leaders concluded that the next attempt had to be planned in far more detail, and soon, before the government could transfer more of them.3 sources3 sources

The revolution of 25 April 1974, told in its own article, overthrew Caetano in a day. Spínola received power from him at the Carmo barracks in Lisbon. The Caldas officers were freed from Trafaria the same day, Almeida Bruno late in the afternoon.3 sources3 sources

How much the 16th of March counted is still argued over. Veterans of the movement's majority remember it as a reckless adventure by Spínola's followers. Its leaders, like Ramos, see it as the step without which 25 April would not have happened. Tornada found that the march had no political, economic or social organisation behind it and was driven more by emotion than by strategy.4 sources4 sources

Caldas da Rainha has adopted the date. In March 2018, five years after it was first announced, a monument to 16 March by the sculptor José de Santa Bárbara was unveiled in front of the barracks, at a cost of €80,000, in a ceremony led by the secretary of state for defence, Marcos Perestrello, who said the date should be part of the school curriculum. The town marks the anniversary each year. In 2026 the council held a ceremony at the monument on the day, and two days earlier the historian Maria Inácia Rezola, executive commissioner of the official 50th-anniversary commemorations of the revolution, gave a talk on 16 March and the building of Portuguese democracy.2 sources2 sources

The split that sent the column out alone did not end with the revolution. Spínola wanted a controlled transition with himself at the head, and the movement's majority wanted elections and decolonisation. The quarrel ran on until his failed coup of 11 March 1975, after which Almeida Bruno, freed from Trafaria less than a year earlier, was arrested again, this time on Otelo's orders.2 sources2 sources