MFA
Armed Forces Movement -- the captains' organisation. A faction or legal office in the Carnation Revolution file -- past politics, not a present directory.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Scale16
Intensity12
Duration15
Tech shift10
Political impact58
Cultural memory48
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Quick answers
Are the scores a ranking of nations or armies?
No. Scores are browsing aids inside an era-bounded atlas — not live league tables of countries.
How many died on the day?
Four people, killed by regime police fire. The colonial wars before and the Angolan war after have much larger ledgers.
Why did officers move?
They could not win or end the African wars inside the Estado Novo's politics. The MFA was a captains' revolt against a war and a closed regime.
Who led it?
The MFA was collective; Otelo planned operations; Spinola received the surrender and briefly headed the junta -- then fell out with the leftward process.
What happened to the colonies?
Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola became independent in 1974-75. Angola collapsed into a long internationalised war. Hundreds of thousands of retornados came to Portugal.
Was it a left-wing coup?
It opened a left-revolutionary period (PREC) and then a pluralist constitution. Reducing 25 April to one ideology misses the captains' war-weariness.
MFA units from the army (and other services) versus a regime whose police fired the only lethal shots in Lisbon. Historical description of 1974 forces, not a present Portuguese ORBAT.
African liberation armies were the other "force" that made the coup thinkable.
Systems
Estado Novo
The Salazar/Caetano dictatorship (1933-1974).
PREC
Ongoing revolutionary process, 1974-76.
Marcelo Caetano as centre
Salazar's successor; surrendered at Carmo. Died in Brazilian exile.
Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho as legal object
Planned the Lisbon movements; later a controversial PREC figure and a 1980s trial -- a long afterlife.
Civilian / alliance context
Amilcar Cabral (PAIGC (Guinea-Bissau)): Assassinated in 1973; his war is why Portuguese captains moved. An African icon of the cause, dead before 25 April. Named as history, not as a remote-control cartoon.
Meters
Geographic / demographic scale
16
Peak political violence
12
How long it defined a period
15
Tech or method shift
10
Borders, regimes, law, alliances
58
Film, school, ritual density
48
Hotspots
Late empire war
1961-74: Three African fronts. Named as historical geography of Carnation Revolution, not as a targeting list.
The day
25 Apr 1974: MFA, carnations, Carmo. Named as historical geography of Carnation Revolution, not as a targeting list.
PREC / decolonisation
1974-75: Revolution at home; independences abroad. Named as historical geography of Carnation Revolution, not as a targeting list.
Stabilising day
25 Nov 1975: A second military intervention that Portuguese memory still argues. Named as historical geography of Carnation Revolution, not as a targeting list.
Democracy
1976-: Constitution; later EU Portugal. Named as historical geography of Carnation Revolution, not as a targeting list.
Materials
Chronology (25 April 1974 (coup day; PREC to 1976 constitution))
Carnation Revolution is bounded as 25 April 1974 (coup day; PREC to 1976 constitution). 1961-74 opens the usual narrative (African wars); 1976 closes it (Constitution).
Theatre: Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks.
Place is evidence. Lisbon and Portuguese armed forces; aftershocks in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau is where Carnation Revolution happened -- a map for readers, not a guide for repeating it.
Human-cost band
four dead from residual regime fire; a famously low-blood seizure that ended a dictatorship and a colonial war Keep the figure as a range. Spectacle integers are not a census.
Grandola
The signal song on the radio. A material of the Carnation Revolution vocabulary, dated to 25 April 1974 (coup day; PREC to 1976 constitution).
No operations order will be reconstructed as a template.
Carnations in barrels are a civilian-military image, not a tactic.