Military vehicles and red carnations have returned to the streets and squares of downtown Lisbon as Portugal re-enacted dramatic moments from the army coup that brought democracy to the country 50 years ago.
Tens of thousands of people on Thursday attended the celebrations of the so-called Carnation Revolution, which ended a stifling four-decade dictatorship established by Antonio Salazar.
It also paved the way for Portugal's 1986 entry into the European Union, then called the European Economic Community.
At the time, the turmoil and political uncertainty in Portugal, a NATO member, caused alarm in Western capitals as the Portuguese Communist Party appeared poised to take power. Moderate parties, however, won at the ballot box.
Portugal's President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Prime Minister Luis Montenegro presided over the colourful parade of troops and armoured vehicles with many onlookers holding red carnation flowers, the symbol of the revolution.
Red carnations were plentiful at Portuguese stores and in street stalls in the spring of 1974 and people stuck them in the gun barrels of the insurrectionists.
During the day, troops and armoured vehicles moved into a downtown square as part of a re-enactment of one of the early stages of the uprising, when units took up planned positions at key places in the capital.
Soldiers also re-enacted the insurrectionists' convergence on a paramilitary garrison in a jacaranda-dotted square called Largo do Carmo.
That was where Marcelo Caetano, the Portuguese leader at the time, holed up and was surrounded by troops and jubilant civilians before surrendering.
Tens of thousands of people gathered for the annual afternoon march along the city's main thoroughfare, the Avenida da Liberdade, or Freedom Avenue.
Simmering frustration with prolonged colonial wars against independence movements in Africa spurred the junior officers' revolt, which succeeded in toppling the dictatorship in about 24 hours, with only five deaths.
Salazar, who died in 1970, clung to the African colonies long after other European powers had withdrawn from the continent and resisted modernising his country amid Europe's cultural changes of the 1960s.
Salazar's rule ran through roughly the same period as General Francisco Franco's in neighbouring Spain, though his time in power was far less bloody.
Australian Associated Press
