Premains to be 91 years old (on May 2), sick and weakened, the woman who became known as “Celeste dos Cravos” no longer wants to talk about the revolution, now passing the floor to her granddaughter, Carolina Caeiro Fontela, to “rectify gaps in the history” that successive years of news have perpetuated.
“There are a lot of people who still think she was a florist [que deu um cravo a um soldado]but my grandmother wasn’t a florist”, the granddaughter told the Lusa agency, remembering that Celeste worked in a ‘self-service’ in the Franjinhas building, on Rua Braamcamp, in Lisbon.
Separated from her husband, “for reasons I never wanted to tell”, and at the time with her mother and a 5-year-old daughter in her care, the woman, who “lived in a humble house, without radio or television”, only when she arrived at employment, on April 24, 1974, I knew that a revolution was taking place.
On that day, Carolina said, the ‘self-service’, which had completed one year, would not open its doors and the boss, “who had ordered carnations to be bought to offer to customers and decorate the space, told the employees to take a bunch each “.
Celeste picked up her bunch of carnations – which, as she still insists on saying today, “were red and white, which were few, but they were also white” – and decided that she wouldn’t go home. She headed to Rossio to see “what I had been waiting for so long to happen.”
It was then that he asked a soldier what they were doing there and if he needed anything.
The soldier, “whose identity I never knew, signaled that he wanted a cigarette” and Celeste, who suffered from lung disease and never smoked, gave him a clove, which the soldier placed in the barrel of the gun and which would end up being the symbol of the revolution.
Fifty years later, Celeste makes a point of parading on Avenida da Liberdade on Thursday, with a carnation on her chest. But Carolina has doubts: “I don’t know if her health will allow it and, for that, we needed to find a wheelchair, which no one has found us yet, because in all these years no one has done anything for my grandmother”, she lamented.
Today, her grandmother’s enthusiasm for the revolution is joined by her granddaughter’s revolt because “no organization has ever given her the recognition she deserves, because no one has ever wanted to know what she went through in life.”
“Celeste dos Cravos” was also Celeste who in 1988 “lost everything in the Chiado fire, was left without a home, without photographs, without the memories of a lifetime”, who was forced to move to a house where “there are more than for a year she was prevented from entering because the landlord changed the building’s lock because he wanted to increase the rent”, and which 25 years ago had its history linked to the 25th of April.
“At the 25th anniversary celebrations, everyone called her to give interviews, she walked from one radio station to another, from one television station to another, on the subway, because no one had ever transported her. She became extremely tired and soon after had a stroke”, said Carolina, lamenting that “on April 26th, no one had wanted to know about Celeste”.
With serious vision, hearing and mobility problems, Celeste now lives at home with her daughter and granddaughter, in Alcobaça (Leiria district), “with a renovation that does not allow her to buy the hearing aid she needs, or a chair of wheels”. But, added the granddaughter, “on Thursday, when you turn on the television, everything will be with carnations on your chest, in the parades and in the Assembly of the Republic.”
If health permits on that day, as far as Carolina is concerned, Celeste will also celebrate the revolution with a carnation on her chest. But what remains in the granddaughter’s chest is revolt at the “feeling of ingratitude in a country that gives so many decorations, makes so many public recognitions from the Government and the Presidency”, and where “there was no body capable of honoring Celeste dos Carnations while she’s alive.”
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