Revolution, Transition and Democracy: the debate over the meaning of the Carnation Revolution

Abstract

The consolidation of a democratic representative regime from 1982-1986 and the abandonment of strategic projects of rupture, which only survive in extreme marginality, had a substantial impact on the historiographical discussion of the revolution. The Portuguese revolution not only ceased to be the subject of theoretical discussion, which was not further elaborated, as it even became, for some, submerged by the winners memory, which obscured the revolution with a vague notion of “chaos” and tried to erect upon it the theory of transition from dictatorship to representative democracy without a revolutionary leap. This phenomenon was revealed in the abandonment of the concept of revolution itself and the adoption of the concept of transition to democracy. We will discuss in this article three debates around the meaning of the revolution: the chapter ‘The revolution of 25 April and the PREC, by Rui Ramos in the history of Portugal he has coordinated, where the author sees the revolution as a ‘coup of generals’, directed by the AFM (MFA) on the ground, to which the people were essentially oblivious or manipulated; António Costa Pinto’s approach in more than one work, who sees the revolution as a troubled transition and consolidation of representati ve democracy; and Fernando Rosas’s analysis, for whom the process is marked by the revolutionary rupture that gave birth to democracy.