In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century

by Geert Mak

  Behind the scenes, King Juan Carlos, grandson of King Alfons XIII, had been carefully manoeuvred into place to play a modest role within the dictatorship; when it came down to it, however, and at precisely the right moment, he stood his ground. When pistol-toting Colonel Antonio Tejero tried to take the Spanish parliament hostage in 1981, Juan Carlos blocked his moves with a few fast manoeuvres of his own. In the appointments he made, he consistently chose innovators and democrats. And then, after this bloodless royal revolution, he withdrew into the lee of the parliamentary monarchy.

  Even while Franco was still alive, Franco's Spain had ceased to exist. His popular support was extremely limited: in the country's first free elections he received barely two per cent of the vote. Suárez was quickly forgotten. After all, as Enzensberger wrote, he remained a turncoat in the eyes of his former comrades. And, for the democrats he had helped into power, he would always remain one of Franco's lackeys. ‘The hero of the retreat can be sure of only one thing: the ingratitude of the fatherland.’

  Chapter FIFTY-SIX

  Lisbon

  ‘I'M TELLING YOU MY STORY AT A STRANGE MOMENT. MY FATHER-in-law recently took a bad fall, in a shop, one of those silly accidents that can finish off the elderly, and now he's in hospital. He may recover, but it could also go badly, I don't know. We're standing vigil by his bed, the phone is always within arm's reach, you probably know how it is, those strange days full of memories.

  ‘I was born in Mafra, in central Portugal. My father was a clerk, my mother worked as a switchboard operator at the post office. Like all red-blooded Portuguese boys, I ended up in the army after secondary school and spent six years in our former colony of Mozambique. That was in the 1960s. I worked at the commander's office, and that's where I met my wife. She was Governor Almeida's daughter, and also his private secretary. I often helped out as an interpreter, and that's how we got to know each other.

  ‘When the colonial wars began I was sent to Angola as an infantry captain: ambushes, skirmishes, hopeless. In Mozambique I had simply done my job as a professional military man, I hadn't thought about it much. But in Angola that all changed. My comrades and I ended up in the filthiest situations, and we realised more and more that this was not going to solve the problem of the Angolan rebellion. We, the young officers, had endless conversations, and we always arrived at the same conclusion: colonialism was a misguided system, and also completely outdated. We were being asked to buck the tide of history. Portugal would never, ever win this war.

  ‘It's no coincidence that the Carnation Revolution was largely started by officers of that same generation. We had all attended the same classes, gone to the same boarding schools, carried on the same discussions. The conspiracy itself was put together within a few months, but only after ten years of thinking and talking.

  ‘In 1970 I was sent back to Portugal, as a major on the general staff. Salazar died that same year, but he had appointed his protégé and ally Marcel Caetano as prime minister in 1968. Our country was as poor as could be. Child mortality was four times as high as in France, a third of all Portuguese people couldn't read or write. Some villages were inhabited only by children and old people: millions of people had emigrated to Brazil or the United States. So, if only for economic reasons, the burden of the colonial war was too much for the country to bear. I saw it happening right before my eyes. I was involved in the logistics, I had to draw up the budgets for the purchase of arms and munitions. I did it precisely according to the norms, but I noticed that it was becoming more difficult all the time. For example, we had to order eleven million units of meat for the troops. The government could only come up with two million. We needed so many rifles, and so much ammunition. We received only a tenth of it. It was as though the leaders in Lisbon were telling the soldiers: “Go throw stones, try saving yourself that way!”

  ‘So the army was the seedbed for the Portuguese revolution, from the moment when the military top brass was forced to admit boys from the lower and middle classes to officer rank. I went through that process myself; it started with my dissatisfaction as a commissioned officer, and I ended up as a revolutionary. We were, after all, confronted each day with the mistakes and stupidities of the regime in Lisbon and with the cruelty of that senseless war in Angola. That was the background of our Captains’ Movement. It was the only way we could save our lives, and save our country as well.

  ‘In February 1974, General António de Spínola, the army's real rising star, published a book in which he called for an end to be put to the war as quickly as possible. One month later the Caetano government stripped him of all his functions. It just so happened that we were all in Portugal around that time. That was an exceptionally favourable coincidence, and it established the moment for our revolution. In March 1974 we drafted our political programme. Then we decided to carry out the coup, Otelo de Carvalho, Vasco Lourenço and myself. The date we chose was 25 April, in the same week that the red carnations began blooming in the fields. That is how the Carnation Revolution was born.

  ‘Organising a military coup is extremely complicated. We started by setting up the Armed Forces Movement, the MFA. We held big meetings, and all the army units sent representatives. My job was to maintain contacts with the air force and the navy. The most I could get out of them was their promise not to intervene. We were quite skilled at the art of maintaining secrecy, but the government must have noticed something, it had to, there were too many people involved. But then, what could they do? If they had arrested all of us, they would have had no one left to send to war.

  ‘Alongside that, I had a major personal problem: my father-in-law. At that same moment, as chance would have it, Almeida was chief of the general staff. And I, Vítor Alves, had to start a revolution against him. It was an extremely painful situation. My father-in-law was crazy about me, he only had daughters and from the moment I showed up in the family I was an unexpected joy for him, his favourite, a son. Our relationship had always been intense. But back then, in 1974, Almeida was the last person I could talk to about what I was doing. His daughter, my wife, also took part in the rebellion, she knew that something was on its way, all the major meetings were held at our house … Yes, indeed … Brutus …

  ‘Finally, the moment arrived. On 23 April a man was sitting on a park bench behind the statue of the Marquis de Pombal, discreetly handing out envelopes to a few passers-by. All the instructions for the next day were in there, the entire scenario: troop movements, positions, everything down to the minute. That night, of course, I didn't sleep a wink. At precisely 12.25 a.m., Radio Renaissance played the forbidden song ‘Grandola’. That was the signal we had agreed on for the rebellion. All over Portugal, MFA units came into action. By 3 a.m. they had occupied the radio and television stations, the airports and the centre of Lisbon. My job was to neutralise the army top brass, and that all went very well, exactly according to plan. Prime Minister Caetano fled to the police barracks in the Largo do Carmo, that evening he surrendered, and by the end of the day it was all over.

  ‘My father-in-law was treated well, I saw to that, no one harmed a hair on his head. But still, that coup – I must be frank – placed a great burden on our relationship. He kept saying: why didn't you tell me? But if I had fold him I would have placed him in an impossible position. He would either have had to turn us all in, have his daughter's husband arrested, or be a traitor to his own government.

  ‘Spínola became the head of our provisional government, we officers stayed in the background, we wanted the international community to see that respectable people had seized power here. The only unexpected thing was the reaction in the streets: we had never expected our coup to generate such a massive explosion of joy and sympathy. And, at the same time, that was a problem for us. It was a bottle of champagne that was suddenly uncorked, and drops flew everywhere; hundreds of political groups began popping up. Within two months our own MFA was deeply divided. One group ganged together around Spínola. That was the most conservative move
ment, they attempted a couple of coups and then disappeared from the scene. Then you had the Otelists, left-wing radicals around security chief General Otelo de Carvalho. That was the group we belonged to, socialists and social democrats. And there was a big communist group around Vasco Gonçalves.

  ‘A number of things turned out well. Peace came to Africa: Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola became independent. But Portugal itself looked like it was gradually disintegrating. That first year – I had been appointed deputy prime minister – we put most of our effort into breathing new life into the country's locked economic and social life. And the army had to be reorganised and agricultural reforms carried out. At the same time, all kinds of people were coming back from Africa, some of them relieved, others angry and disappointed, and that didn't make the political situation any easier.

  ‘In March 1975 the right-wing elements made a final attempt to get back into power, under Spínola. When that failed, he fled to Spain. The next month, on the first anniversary of the revolution, elections were held. The communists didn't do too well, Mário Soares’ social democrats won, but the group of officers around Otelo de Carvalho didn't want to abide by that. Finally, in November 1975, we carried out a second coup under General Antonio Eanes, threw the radicals out of the government and organized new elections. After that, the political situation gradually calmed down. But it wasn't easy, organising a coup against your old comrades …

  ‘Now we're a quarter of a century further along. We lost Africa, and now we belong to an expanded Europe. In 1986 Portugal suddenly became a full member of the European Community, and all the other European countries thought that was wonderful. But still, it was a big mistake. We should have arranged things here at home first. Our country was too far behind, it had no chance against the other member states. What did we have to offer? Only the beaches and the sun, only a growing tourist industry. Why would anyone set up operations here when they can have the most modern of everything in North-Western Europe or northern Italy? Why grow oranges here when inexpensive fruit from Spain is already flooding our local markets? We can't deal with that economic onslaught, and it's only getting worse.

  ‘We should have created a transitional phase to allow Portugal to reach a more or less equal level with the rest of Europe, before becoming a full member of the EEC. And, what's more, the government should have held a referendum, before making that decision. But Mário Soares had a political reason for having us join up so quickly: the democracy had to be safeguarded, and he felt that could only happen under the EEC. I think he was wrong. That democracy was something we had already appropriated for ourselves, during the Carnation Revolution of 1974 and the November Movement of 1975.

  ‘For the members of the European club, Portugal is totally uninteresting. All they want, following their political logic, is hegemony over the entire Iberian Peninsula. They don't see any blank spots or cracks in that picture. For centuries, the Spanish tried to conquer our poor little plot of land, and now they are easily succeeding through the European Union, with the money they use to buy up everything, with the meat and vegetables that are flooding our villages. Things will get better for us, I don't doubt that. But we will lose our identity. That was at the core of the Carnation Revolution: our democracy and our identity. Now we're handing that back to Europe.

  ‘And what about my father-in-law? It was inevitable, our clash, sometimes you have to make choices, it was about democracy, about freedom for everyone. He also realised that there was no sense in staying angry with me, but he suffered. In 1974 he was Caetano's crown prince; if there hadn't been a revolution he would have been Portugal's next strongman. And suddenly there we were in the spotlights, standing on his stage, playing a role that was meant for him …

  ‘It was always our custom for the whole family to eat together every Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile I became a cabinet minister, deputy prime minister, ambassador, presidential adviser, and he remained bitter. Those remarks at the table all the time, I couldn't take it any more and I stopped going. For twenty years I ate alone on Sunday afternoon. My wife and my daughter went, I wanted them to, family ties are important.

  ‘And now here I am, sitting beside his bed, holding his hand.’

  Some people claim that Portugal is an island, that you can't get there without getting your feet wet, that all those stories about dusty border roads to Spain are simply fables. The weather map on Spanish TV shows Portugal in blue, almost all sea, barely any land. And indeed: I find myself cruising down the quietest four-lane motorway I have ever seen, not a car in sight between me and the horizon, I sail across the mountains. The two Iberian countries live back to back. In Lisbon, for the first time since Odessa, I hear people talking about going ‘to Europe’.

  On the ferry across the Tagus, the evening rush hour floats to the far shore. For twenty minutes, commuters sit on the top deck: civil servants, office girls, workers, nurses, poor, wealthy, young, old, white, brown, all with bags on their laps and their eyes on the horizon. The sky above the river is red from the evening sun. I see the contours of the impressive suspension bridge, ships in the haze, the ocean in the distance. The passengers are silent, but everywhere the electronics twitter like an aviary. A black businessman is playing tunes on his telephone, a young boy wearing a baseball hat is fighting space invaders in the palm of his hand, the black girl across from me is playing with a discman, her beautiful mother stares dreamily at the water.

  The Lisbon of this top deck seems almost American. Nowhere else in Europe have I seen the Third World so naturally present as it is here. The retornados, the flood of emigrants from the former colonies, have been taken in by the Portuguese with the fatigued tolerance of a family that already had so many mouths to feed. And most of them have got by, even the non-whites. Today, over two decades later, they are so much a part of Lisbon that it seems as though they have lived here for ten generations, proud and self-aware, for if there is anything that stimulates integration it is the solidarity of the poor. Once at quayside the crowd scatters away, rushing for buses and cars. In the twilight, great clouds of smoke hang around the little stands that sell roasted chestnuts.

  That evening I have dinner with a friend from Lisbon, in a crowded and aromatic establishment. ‘We still walk around with the inheritance of our isolation,’ he feels. ‘To a certain extent, Spain actually participated in the European adventure, it accepted American aid and modernised in the 1950s. But Portugal under Salazar turned its back on all that. Agriculture here was almost medieval, everything revolved around the colonies. When they revolted, that also meant the end of the Portuguese economy.’

  He cites statistics: fifteen per cent of all Portuguese citizens are still illiterate; in some villages it's as high as forty per cent; since the opening of the borders with the EU, the country's agriculture has almost collapsed; in rural areas, the standard of living is half that of the European average; the villages continue to empty out; almost one out of every three families lives beneath the poverty level. There are nearly as many Portuguese people living in and around Paris as there are in all of Porto.

  Later that evening we stroll through the narrow streets. The rain patters down; this is a place that makes you melancholy. Every once in a while a staggering black man appears from the darkness, reeling from the alcohol, drugs or misery. The sea is everywhere.

  I dedicate a large part of the next day to Lisbon's loveliest tourist attraction: tram line 28. The driver picks his way like a jockey through the old town, rattles his throttle, clenches the silver brake handle as we descend steeply, then kicks in the groaning electric motor again, back uphill. We creak around a corner into an alleyway, stamp like an elephant past cobblers and tailors, the bells ring, the manometers tremble, the pumps rattle, but we make it through every era.

  Lisbon is possessed of a great, dilapidated beauty, the same beauty as some Eastern European capitals, but without the intense buffing-up that has taken place there in the last decade. ‘An entire country, embalmed like
a mummy for forty years! That was Salazar's achievement!’ Hans Magnus Enzensberger wrote twelve years ago, during a visit to this city. ‘Salazar was, in his own way, a utopian. His ideal was a world where nothing moved, a state of total hypnosis.’

  During that visit, Enzensberger also took a ride on line 28. Back in 1987 he saw the trams still in their original condition, with little folding gates at the entrance, plush on the seats and all the patents from 1889–1916 stamped on plates in a nickel frame. Today I see buttons, electric sliding doors and leatherette. Along line 15 the supertram glides through the streets like a black and red snake; the old trams have been sold to American amusement parks. Line 28, too, is undergoing a metamorphosis, from a means of transport to a tourist attraction. In the local papers, the panic is rising. There is talk of the danger of landslides in this already hard-struck city, due to the construction of a new subway line, right under the old town. ‘Dozens of old buildings may collapse any moment into a pile of rubble and dust!’ O Independente writes. The mummy is finally beginning to stir.

  In Lisbon there are almost no traces of the turbulent 1970s, of those days when Portugal seized and held the attention of all Europe. Democratic deeds of heroism are not commemorated with pompous blocks of stone. At Largo do Carmo, a lovely old square, a simple round paving stone is the only thing commemorating the historic scene that took place here in 1974: Caetano's surrender to the rebel tanks and the cheering crowd.