Portugal, 1974 — military coup
Event Summary
On 25 April 1974 the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) carried out a largely bloodless military coup that overthrew Marcelo Caetano and the Estado Novo regime in Portugal. Known as the Carnation Revolution because almost no shots were fired, it led to the Portuguese transition to democracy and the end of the Portuguese Colonial War, with independence following for Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe.
Films & Footage
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Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
How It Unfolded
Hand-coded by Coup Atlas from the sources on this page, using a fixed list of tactics. Only events we have read through carry this coding, so most records do not have it yet.
- Led by
- Military
- How long it took
- Under a day — resolved within 24 hours
- Troop movements in the capital or key cities
- Seizure of broadcasters / coup declaration on state media
- Mass mobilization of civilians (for or against)
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
23504251974- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-235-1974-04-25-2
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Marcelo Caetano, Prime Minister of Portugal (overthrown).
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; exiled. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Luttwak
Wikipedia
New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →