“O povo é sereno”: smoke over the Terreiro do Paço, 9 November 1975

On the afternoon of Sunday 9 November 1975 the Terreiro do Paço, the great riverside square at the foot of Lisbon's Baixa, was full. The crowd had come to back the Sixth Provisional Government, seven weeks old, and its prime minister, a navy admiral named José Baptista Pinheiro de Azevedo. Beside him on the platform stood the two civilian leaders whose parties had called the rally: Mário Soares of the Socialist Party and Francisco Sá Carneiro of the Popular Democratic Party.3 sources3 sources

The admiral was in the middle of his speech when something went off in the crowd. RTP's history project describes an explosion of tear gas; a 2021 article in the weekly Sábado speaks of smoke bombs. Either way, smoke rose over the heads of the people in front of him and part of the crowd began to panic.2 sources2 sources

Pinheiro de Azevedo did not leave the microphone. He spoke straight to the crowd, and RTP's history project keeps a short sound clip of the moment under the title “O povo é sereno”.2 sources2 sources

“O povo é sereno” became one of the best-remembered lines of the revolutionary years, quoted alongside the admiral's other outbursts. Behind it was a government that, within a fortnight, would declare itself unable to act.4 sources4 sources

On 25 April 1974 a military coup led by the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) ended the Estado Novo, the dictatorship built by António de Oliveira Salazar and run since 1968 by Marcelo Caetano. The officers promised to settle the colonial war in Africa and, within a year, to call an elected assembly to write a new constitution. Until then the country was run by provisional governments under military oversight.3 sources3 sources

There were six of them in just over two years. The first, under Adelino da Palma Carlos, lasted two months. Then came four led by General Vasco Gonçalves; the last of them was backed by the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and its ally, the Portuguese Democratic Movement (MDP). The Portuguese call these years the PREC, the Processo Revolucionário em Curso, or “revolutionary process under way”.4 sources4 sources

The promised election came on 25 April 1975, the revolution's first anniversary. It was the first in Portugal held by truly universal suffrage, and 91.66 per cent of registered voters took part. The Socialists won 37.87 per cent of the vote and 116 seats. The PPD of Francisco Sá Carneiro came second with 26.39 per cent. The Communists, with 12.46 per cent, came third.2 sources2 sources

The vote split the country in two. In northern districts such as Braga and Viseu, the PPD came first and the Communists took less than 4 per cent. In Setúbal, south of the Tagus, and in the Alentejo districts of Évora and Beja, the PCP ran level with the Socialists, and in Beja it came first.1 source1 source

The Socialists, backed by the PPD and the CDS, argued for representative democracy, with power resting on elections. The PCP and the far-left groups argued for a socialist revolution resting on “revolutionary legitimacy”. Within weeks the argument moved from the newspapers into the streets and the barracks.2 sources2 sources

The break came over a newspaper. When the Lisbon daily República reappeared in July under the control of its workers' committee, the PS walked out of the Fourth Provisional Government, and the PPD followed a week later. On 18 and 19 July the Socialists packed the Antas stadium in Porto and the Alameda in Lisbon, where Soares asked the President, General Francisco da Costa Gomes, to dismiss Vasco Gonçalves.3 sources3 sources

That summer, still remembered as the Verão Quente, the “hot summer”, turned violent. RTP's history project counts 64 violent acts in July alone: raids, arson and assaults, mostly against left-wing parties, activists and associations. It says they were driven by far-right movements such as the ELP and the MDLP, and by senior clergy in some dioceses. In August, attacks on offices of the PCP, the MDP and the far left multiplied.2 sources2 sources

The army split as well. On 7 August nine members of the Council of the Revolution, the MFA's ruling body, published the Documento dos Nove, with Ernesto Melo Antunes as one of its main authors. It rejected both the Eastern European model and the social democracy of Western Europe, and called for a gradual road to socialism through political democracy. The next day Gonçalves swore in his fifth government, without the Socialists or the PPD.3 sources3 sources

On 18 August Gonçalves gave a speech in Almada defending the revolutionary vanguards and arguing that election results could not overturn “revolutionary legitimacy”. Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, commander of the COPCON security force, barred him from military units and told him to go and rest. On 30 August he resigned as prime minister. At Tancos on 5 September an assembly of army delegates rejected him as chief of the armed forces general staff, by 180 votes to 47 with 38 abstentions, and at the MFA assembly that followed he left the Council of the Revolution.2 sources2 sources

The new prime minister was Pinheiro de Azevedo, an admiral without a party who also kept the defence portfolio. His Sixth Provisional Government, sworn in on 19 September 1975, brought back the Socialists and the PPD, who held most of the ministries, with the Communists still represented. The MDP, the PCP's ally, had no ministers at all.4 sources4 sources

The government had a majority in the Constituent Assembly but little control over the streets or the barracks. On 6 September a group calling itself Soldados Unidos Vencerão (SUV), “Soldiers United Will Win”, had presented itself in Porto. It was anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, close to far-left groups such as the Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat (PRP), and called on soldiers to organise against “reactionaries in the barracks and bourgeois officers”.1 source1 source

October brought open talk of coups, and the rival factions used the press and radio to prepare the country for a fight. The Church-owned station Rádio Renascença had been occupied by its workers for months, despite government orders to hand it back. At 4.30 in the morning of 7 November, on orders from the Council of Ministers and the Council of the Revolution, Paratrooper Company 122 planted two bombs at its transmitters at Buraca and silenced it. The station went back to the Church on 28 December.2 sources2 sources

The historians who wrote RTP's account call this “bomb of the powers that be” the lowest point of state authority. The government saw it differently. Two days later its supporters filled the Terreiro do Paço, after rallies that the prime minister said had already been held in Porto and Faro.2 sources2 sources

The speech, whose full text is kept by the Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril at the University of Coimbra, was a sustained attack on the far left. Pinheiro de Azevedo told the crowd that the people wanted the Sixth Government and wanted it to govern, and that democracy meant the will of the majority. He mocked “the professionals of the demonstration” and claimed the square for his side.1 source1 source

He defended the destruction of the Renascença transmitters as a decision of the Council of the Revolution, carried out “with consented discipline”. He complained of soldiers and officers who appeared hooded at street demonstrations to challenge military discipline. And he listed what had to return to its place: “the weapons to the barracks, the trials to the courts, the workers to work, calm to the streets”.1 source1 source

The sources do not say at which point in the speech the canister went off, and who set it off is less clear still. Sábado's obituary of Carlos Antunes in 2021 states that the smoke bombs were planted by the far-left PRP, which it describes as the party of “the duo Isabel do Carmo and Carlos Antunes”. This article has found no second source that confirms it.2 sources2 sources

The rest of the day showed how little the square could settle. The same Sunday the commanders of the Southern, Central and Northern military regions met in Porto; Costa Gomes met ministers, Soares, Sá Carneiro and the Communist leader Álvaro Cunhal about the coming independence of Angola; and the PCP's office in Alfândega da Fé, in the district of Bragança, was attacked.1 source1 source

The calm did not last the week. On 10 November construction workers went on strike for a collective labour contract. On 12 November they gathered outside the Constituent Assembly at São Bento, and when the prime minister went out on the balcony to speak to them, he was booed. The workers would not let the deputies leave, except those of the PCP and the MDP. RTP's accounts differ on how long this lasted: one says the siege went on until late morning the next day, another that union leaders and the prime minister reached an agreement only in the early hours of 14 November.3 sources3 sources

RTP's “phrase of the day” for the siege belongs to Pinheiro de Azevedo again, and is much coarser: “Olhe, bardamerda para o fascista!”, which might be politely rendered as “Look, the fascist can go to hell!”. It joined “o povo é sereno” in the anthology of the admiral's sayings.2 sources2 sources

On 16 November workers from Lisbon's industrial belt and the Alentejo rallied for “popular power”, at the call of the PCP and the far-left front FUR. Then Pinheiro de Azevedo became the first head of a Portuguese government to go on strike. At a Council of Ministers that began on 19 November and ran into the next morning, the cabinet suspended its own activity, unable to act in the face of an “avalanche” of events.3 sources3 sources

The strike lasted until 28 November. In between came 25 November, a military confrontation that ended with the moderate officers around the Group of Nine in control of the armed forces and the revolutionary units around COPCON pushed aside. That story is told in its own article.3 sources3 sources

The Sixth Provisional Government survived 25 November and stayed in office until 23 July 1976, when Mário Soares formed the first constitutional government. Pinheiro de Azevedo ran for president in June 1976. He came third, with 692,147 votes or 14.37 per cent, behind the winner, António Ramalho Eanes, with 61.59 per cent, and Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, with 16.46 per cent.4 sources4 sources

He died on 10 August 1983, the day after an International Monetary Fund delegation signed a rescue agreement with Portugal. Diário de Notícias remembered him as the “admiral without fear”, the first head of government to go on strike, and the author of two famous phrases: “O povo é sereno, é só fumaça” and “Bardamerda para o fascista!”.1 source1 source

The phrase has lasted longer than the man or his government. When a Portuguese “yellow vests” protest that promised to “stop Portugal” fizzled in December 2018, a columnist in A Voz de Trás-os-Montes explained the flop with the admiral's words: the people are calm. The same column, by Armando Moreira, misremembered the 1975 rally as one led by the Communists.1 source1 source