25 November 1975: the paratroopers' revolt that ended the revolution

On the evening of Tuesday 25 November 1975, viewers of Portuguese television watched an army captain talking straight to camera from RTP's studios at Lumiar, in the north of Lisbon. He was Manuel Duran Clemente, political coordinator at the Military Administration School (EPAM), and his unit had occupied the studios at three that afternoon. Two paratrooper sergeants had already read out a statement explaining why their comrades had seized Air Force bases.1 source1 source

Clemente held the studios, but not the transmitters. Commandos controlled RTP's broadcasting antennas and could cut him off at any moment. Clemente told Diário de Notícias in 1995 that he kept the Monsanto antenna until about eight in the evening only because a Communist Party member had fooled the commandos. He improvised for about ten minutes, and towards the end he could only look worried as “technical” faults broke up the picture. Then the broadcast was switched to Porto, and the MFA's last images gave way to a film starring the American comedian Danny Kaye.2 sources2 sources

That cut was replayed for years as a gag. For RTP, Clemente's face was the last image of the revolution to stick in the public memory. By the time he went off air, the President of the Republic had declared a state of siege in the Lisbon region, the commander of the radical security force COPCON was at the presidential palace and out of contact with his troops, and the moderate officers were taking control.3 sources3 sources

On 25 April 1974 a coup by the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), a network of officers, ended the Estado Novo dictatorship. The officers promised to settle the colonial war and, within a year, to call an elected assembly to write a constitution. On 25 April 1975, 91.66% of registered voters turned out to elect it.2 sources2 sources

The streets moved faster than the assembly. After a failed coup attempt by General António de Spínola on 11 March 1975, banks and insurance companies were nationalised and large estates in the Alentejo and Ribatejo were occupied under a land reform. The Portuguese call this stretch the PREC, the Processo Revolucionário em Curso (“revolutionary process under way”). In the “hot summer” that followed, bombs destroyed Communist Party offices in the north and centre of the country.2 sources2 sources

The armed forces split too. Vasco Lourenço, one of the officers involved, later described three factions inside the MFA: the “Gonçalvists”, around the former prime minister Vasco Gonçalves and influenced by the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP); the followers of Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, further to the left; and the moderates, who said they stood by the MFA's original programme.2 sources2 sources

In early August 1975 nine members of the Council of the Revolution, the MFA's ruling body, put their names to a document whose main author was Major Ernesto Melo Antunes. The Document of the Nine called for socialism reached without violating the will of the majority, rejected “a totalitarian conception” of society as well as anarchic populism, and said the current leadership lacked credibility. Within weeks Gonçalves had lost power, and the signatories became known as the Group of Nine.4 sources4 sources

By the autumn, newspapers announced coups from left and right almost daily. On 9 November a canister of tear gas or smoke went off at a rally in Lisbon's Terreiro do Paço for the Sixth Provisional Government, and its prime minister, Admiral José Pinheiro de Azevedo, told the crowd “O povo é sereno” (“The people are calm”) and that it was only smoke. Three days later construction workers besieged the Constituent Assembly. On 20 November his government suspended its own work, in effect going on strike.4 sources4 sources

The spark came from the paratroopers at the Base-Escola de Tancos, in the Ribatejo. Earlier in November they had blown up the transmitters of the Catholic station Rádio Renascença on government orders, and they resented being used. Then 123 of the base's officers walked out, with the backing of the Air Force chief of staff, General Morais e Silva. He ordered the unit wound down: its privates were to be sent home, its sergeants and officers back to their original units.3 sources3 sources

According to Cruzeiro, he also froze the rebels' pay and had their food, water and electricity cut off. President Costa Gomes later told her that Morais e Silva had “great responsibility” for 25 November because of the way he handled the paratroopers.1 source1 source

At the same time the moderates moved against Otelo. The Council of the Revolution decided to replace him as commander of the Lisbon Military Region with Vasco Lourenço of the Group of Nine. That would take away COPCON's authority over the most revolutionary units in the capital. After days of back and forth, Otelo accepted the decision at a council meeting that ran late into the night of 24 November.3 sources3 sources

On his way home, Otelo stopped at COPCON headquarters. There, at about 4.30 in the morning, Costa Martins, an Air Force officer and former minister, told him the paratroopers would not accept this and were about to occupy the air bases. Otelo says two Air Force officers promised to stop them and persuaded him to go to bed. He later said his regret was not phoning the President to warn him.1 source1 source

In the early hours the paratroopers moved. They took the Air Region Command at Monsanto, on the wooded hill above Lisbon, and Air Bases 3, 5 and 6 at Tancos, Monte Real and Montijo. Later accounts speak of up to six bases. At Monsanto they threatened to kill General Pinho Freire, the air region commander, but held him in a room that happened to have a telephone, which he used to tell the Group of Nine what was happening.3 sources3 sources

The General Staff of the Armed Forces (EMGFA) replied that the rebels' grievance against the Air Force generals was a pretext. Its first communiqué said no order to use force had yet been given, to avoid “grave situations”, but warned that one might follow.1 source1 source

The moderates had a plan ready. For months Lieutenant-Colonel António Ramalho Eanes, Vasco Lourenço's deputy, had been preparing a response to an expected coup from the radical left, and on the 25th he directed operations from the Commando Regiment at Amadora, just outside Lisbon. The commandos, under Jaime Neves, were his main strike force.4 sources4 sources

Everything depended on President Francisco da Costa Gomes, a general who negotiated with every side. In Belém he stalled, talked to the revolutionary officers and pressed the Communists not to bring their supporters onto the streets. Otelo, woken at about 11.30 by his own account (other versions have him reaching COPCON only around 2.30 in the afternoon), went first to COPCON, where the commander of the marines offered to go and destroy the commandos at Amadora. Otelo sent him back to barracks and drove to Belém, where he stayed, cut off from his headquarters.2 sources2 sources

The left's other units hesitated. Otelo later said the commander at the fort of Almada phoned to report some 10,000 shipyard workers from Setenave and Lisnave at the gates, asking for weapons; he told him not to hand out “even a penknife”. A group of unions in Lisbon's industrial belt, backed by the Intersindical confederation, said afterwards that the coup had failed for lack of an operational command.2 sources2 sources

Late that afternoon Costa Gomes signed Decree 670-A/75, declaring a state of siege in the Lisbon Military Region under a 1956 law. A curfew followed, troops patrolled the streets and newspapers were stopped from appearing. It is the only state of siege declared in Portugal since 1974; rights were not suspended again until the state of emergency of March 2020.4 sources4 sources

At Monsanto, when the commandos arrived, they met no resistance. Captain Sousa Gonçalves, who led the assault there, later said the “miracle” of 25 November was the other side's unwillingness to fight and risk death. The only fighting came on 26 November.2 sources2 sources

The Military Police were another matter. Their barracks at the Calçada da Ajuda, in western Lisbon, was held by the rebels, and the commandos surrounded it. Jaime Neves led the attack. Vasco Lourenço tried to mediate from Belém, but shots were fired, and three men died: two commandos, Lieutenant José Coimbra and Furriel Joaquim Pires, and a Military Police officer cadet, José Bagagem. Neves obtained the surrender of the Military Police commanders.5 sources5 sources

The same day, Melo Antunes went on television. He criticised radicalism, called for “a pluralist society, in peaceful transition to socialism”, and said the PCP was an essential part of that path. The broadcast pulled Cunhal's party towards the winners' side, and the more hawkish victors openly rejected it.2 sources2 sources

Fifty years on, the basic question is still open. The historian Maria Inácia Rezola, in the Dicionário de História de Portugal, writes that historians agree the military moves were set off by the paratroopers and were more than a corporate grievance. There is no consensus on whether there was an attempted coup, or on who was responsible. Other disagreements, including whether it was a coup attempt or an action provoked to clarify the political and military situation, come back to one unanswered question: who ordered the paratroopers out.1 source1 source

The moderates' version is that they foiled an attempt to seize power. Eanes, in 2025, called it an armed insurrection that the “moderate, democratic and legalist” part of the armed forces defeated. Vasco Lourenço calls it an “action of force” to change the balance inside the Council of the Revolution, which the moderates treated as a coup attempt.2 sources2 sources

In Lourenço's account, Otelo had let the paratroopers send teams to other units to explain their cause, and people linked to the PCP, at first without the party leadership's knowledge, turned them into a show of force; when Costa Gomes confronted Álvaro Cunhal, the party pulled back.1 source1 source

The PCP has always said it had nothing to do with it. When the Constituent Assembly met on 2 December, the PPD, the PS and the CDS accused it, and the far-left UDP attacked it from the other side for abandoning the paratroopers; only the small MDP/CDE held back. The PCP deputy Carlos Brito replied that there had been no insurrection, only “a convergence, for different reasons and with different aims, of acts of military revolt”.1 source1 source

Álvaro Cunhal later called 25 November an anticommunist coup and said the Socialists' alliance with the right had been decisive for its success.1 source1 source

Who gave the order is argued over to this day. The official report on the events, for which Major Marques Júnior was responsible, said the action was launched from COPCON with an order to occupy the bases; the officers it implicated have called it full of lies. Eanes believes Otelo gave the order or covered it, and Diniz de Almeida, second-in-command of the RALIS artillery regiment, has said he saw Otelo order the paratroopers out to lure the left into a trap. Otelo always denied it.3 sources3 sources

Raimundo Narciso, then the PCP leader in charge of the party's links with the military, has said the order came from the military left with the party's approval, which Cunhal denied. Otelo himself told RTP in 2015 that the PCP may not have taken an active part but “must have given the green light”.2 sources2 sources

Others on the left see a trap set by the moderates. Duran Clemente, a Communist sympathiser, told RTP that the paratroopers acted without a political plan, over a quarrel with their chief of staff, and “fell into the snare” the Group of Nine had laid. As evidence of premeditation he points out that his own unit had been left without its commander at the decisive moment.1 source1 source

Maria Manuela Cruzeiro, a researcher at the Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril who interviewed Costa Gomes and Melo Antunes, concluded that several plans were in play and that the moderates' was the most complete. In her reading the moderates had been acting to provoke their opponents, and the paratroopers handed them their pretext “on a plate”; the military left answered that last provocation with a stake it then found it could not sustain.1 source1 source

Cruzeiro also points to a plan within the moderates' plan: lists of officers to arrest drawn up behind the backs of Belém and Amadora, calls to bomb the paratroopers and the RALIS artillery regiment, and talk of extending the state of siege and banning the PCP.2 sources2 sources

The state of siege did not bring a purge of the government. President Costa Gomes and Pinheiro de Azevedo's cabinet stayed in office, including the Communist minister Veiga de Oliveira, who kept his post until the government ended on 23 July 1976. The winners debated outlawing the PCP and some far-left parties, then dropped the idea. Diário de Notícias, one of the papers stopped by the state of siege, was not allowed out again until 22 December.2 sources2 sources

In the barracks the change was sharper. Otelo was removed. Eanes, given the rank of general and made Army chief of staff, spent the following months dismantling the revolutionary army of assemblies, motions and show-of-hands votes. The historian Rui Ramos credits him with freeing the country from the “uniformed gangs” that had run everything in the summer of 1975.3 sources3 sources

The parties used the new balance to renegotiate their pact with the military. A second MFA-parties agreement, signed on 26 February 1976 by the MFA and the CDS, MDP/CDE, PCP, PPD and PS, abolished the MFA Assembly as an organ of sovereignty, cut the powers of the Council of the Revolution and provided for a President elected by universal suffrage rather than by a college.1 source1 source

The Constituent Assembly approved the Constitution on 2 April 1976. It came into force on 25 April, the day Portugal elected its first Assembly of the Republic. The Socialists won again, with 34.87%, but the conservative CDS more than doubled its 1975 share, and the PCP rose slightly. On 27 June Eanes, backed by the PS, the PPD and the CDS, was elected President with 61.59% of the vote.5 sources5 sources

The military did not leave politics at once. The Council of the Revolution survived as the President's advisory body, guardian of the Constitution and legislator on military matters until the first constitutional revision, completed in August 1982, abolished it. The Council of State and the Constitutional Court took over its functions.2 sources2 sources

25 April is a national holiday; 25 November is not, and how to remember it has become a dividing line in Portuguese politics. For years the right asked for it to be commemorated and the left refused. In 2019 Parliament approved a CDS vote of greeting, with the Communists and the Left Bloc voting against and most Socialists abstaining.2 sources2 sources

On 25 November 2024 the Assembly of the Republic held its first solemn session to mark the date, with military honours; the PCP stayed away. For the 50th anniversary in 2025 there was another session and a military parade in the Praça do Comércio. Vasco Lourenço, now president of the Associação 25 de Abril, called the government's celebrations a farce. Eanes, in a message read at the parade, said the point was not to celebrate but to remember.4 sources4 sources

Underneath the argument about holidays is an argument about what Portugal's democracy is. For the right, and for many moderates, 25 November completed 25 April by returning power to elected parties. For the PCP it opened the way to counter-revolution. Pedro Tadeu, a Diário de Notícias columnist, put the case against celebrating it bluntly in 2023: perhaps it had been a necessary day, but it was an ugly one, nobody sang in the streets, and there was no art.5 sources5 sources