The lid is off, and Portugal is still stunned. Even the most jaded democrat must have had moments of feeling, in Lisbon this week, like Wordsworth in revolutionary Paris. Since then of course, revolutions have had a bad press. But when the bartender says: “You are a newspaper man, sir? Here is the news. We are free”, it is hard to suppress a flicker of optimism about this one.
Nothing is certain, however. The events of the past 10 days – the overthrow of a tyrant, the release of political prisoners, the ending of censorship, the return of exiled politicians, the smashing of the secret police – may presage a social revolution of a kind that Portugal has never before experienced. Or they may simply be the brief carnival accompaniments of one more – even if unusually exotic and bloodless – military coup.
At the junta’s headquarters in the old Ministry of Defence, the atmosphere is certainly that of a military coup, though of a Ruritanian kind. Like many public institutions in Lisbon, the Ministry is housed in a former palace; the colour of strawberry, three storeys high, with a handsome baroque doorway and window mouldings, and a curved courtyard behind high gates.
To approach, you must first identify yourself to a motley line of lounging soldiers and sailors, each with his rifle sprouting a carnation, now standard military equipment, from the barrel. The Central London branch of the National Union of Journalists should be gratified at the effectiveness of its membership card.
In the palace courtyard stand a dozen black Mercedes, and groups of officers with epaulets, carrying brief-cases. Every now and again there is a flurry of semi-military activity, some salutes (not always returned) and out speeds a Mercedes; an admiral sitting in the back wearing dark glasses is reading Oggi, the Italian magazine. A member of the junta walks out of the gates; an Air Force chief tanned and startlingly handsome in a dark blue uniform that might be thought rather too well cut in Whitehall.
Extract from a report by Michael Davie
