In the summer of 1975, there were violent attacks on PCP offices in northern Portugal. The West used NATO military manoeuvres and urgently needed loans as leverage. The USA did not want to tolerate any socialist experiments in its sphere of influence. It smelled of a „strategy of tension“ and civil war.
On 25 November 1975, the left wing of the MFA was smashed by right-wing military officers and left-wing military officers were arrested. The right wanted to revise the revolution and democratic freedoms and take revenge on the left. However, the social democrats in the MFA and the Sixth Provisional Government did not want a civil war or a relapse into dictatorship – but neither did they want Portuguese Socialism. This was followed by years of fighting for the social achievements of the Carnation Revolution – sometimes with open police violence. Many things were rolled back bit by bit. Accession to the European Community in 1986 and the associated economic constraints completed the transition to capitalist normality.
Contra a Miséria – Against misery: the road to socialism. Socialism was enshrined as a national goal in the Portuguese constitution of 1976. Although this was withdrawn in the following years, it remains one of the most progressive in Western Europe.
US magazine Time from August 1975 with the title „Red Threat in Portugal“ and portraits of COPCON commander Carvalho, Prime Minister Gonçalves and President Gomes. Many West German media were also staunch opponents of Portuguese Socialism.
The bloody right-wing coup in Chile in 1973 threatened Portugal’s path to socialism, as did the massacre of 500,000 real or alleged communists in Indonesia in 1965 – both with the consent and support of the West.
The West German investigative reporter Günther Wallraff revealed that Spinola was collecting money in West Germany for an armed right-wing coup. The then Bavarian Prime Minister Strauss supported the fascist Arriaga. But there was also solidarity with the revolution: Wallraff and West German leftists supported agricultural co-operatives with donations and East Germany with agricultural machinery and know-how.
Images
Klaus Steiniger
História Da Classe Trabalhadora, @HistClasseTrab
ok-projekt.de, Ausstellung „EL PUEBLO UNIDO – Erinnerung an den 11. September 1973“, eigenes Foto
Buchcover, eigenes Foto