The Carnation Revolution

The end of the longest dictatorship in the history of Western Europe occurred on the 25 April 1974 when the Armed Forces Movement re-established democracy. The «Carnation Revolution», as this military movement came to be known, had as its first aim the ending of the current regime and, secondly, the cessation of the war in Africa. This was a conflict which Portugal had been fighting for more than a decade against the independence movements in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea.

In 1975, the former African colonies declared independence and, in Portugal, a constitutive Parliament was elected by universal suffrage for the first time and a constitution drawn up.  The following year a constitutional Parliament and Government were elected.

After some years of political instability, at the start of the 1980s the system evolved towards the full democracy which is part of Portugal of the present day. With democracy came economic development, a cultural and scientific flowering and, increasingly, progress in the field of new technologies.

In 1985 Portugal signed its accession treaty to the current European Union. Notwithstanding this, it has continued to seek to maintain close ties both with the other seven countries which speak Portuguese - having worked for the establishing of the Community of Countries of the Portuguese Language, - and the Portuguese communities and descendants of Portuguese spread all over the world.

Portugal is nowadays a socially and politically stable country, which is economically prosperous and developed in a humane way. It is a State which increasingly voices its ability to establish dialogue and understand difference. A country proud of its past and with its eyes set on the future, with a culture and a lifestyle which is the accumulation of the close experience of getting along with so many different cultures, starting from the moment when, due to its actions, the modern world was born.

Republic and "Estado Novo"

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