The failed coup of March 16 begins the previous Thursday when general officers of the three branches of the Armed Forces – symbolically known as the rheumatic brigade – gathered at the ceremony in honor of the President of the Council of Ministers, Marcello Caetano, at the São Bento Palace, on the day March 14, 1974.
These officers were not yet old and, probably, none of them would yet suffer from rheumatism. The ceremony took place with the usual solemnity, it was front page news in the newspapers the following day, highlighting the speech by the head of the Government and General Paiva Brandão, spokesperson for the group and Chief of Staff of the Army, who invoked the prerogative of being the oldest of the Chiefs of Staff of the three branches of the Armed Forces, he begins by stating: “The Armed Forces do not make politics but it is their imperative duty, and also our ethics, to fulfill the mission legally determined for us by the Government constituted”.
The speech continued, but Paiva Brandão was wrong: The Armed Forces were actually playing politics: Kaúlza conspired with the ultras, the captains conspired and created the movement that made the 25th of April 1974, Spínola conspired with the Spinolists and missed – together with Costa Gomes – the kiss of loyalty on Thursday, March 14th.
The offense was punished, the prestigious generals Francisco da Costa Gomes and António Sebastião Ribeiro de Spínola were dismissed of the positions Chief and Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces.
Marcello Caetano heard Paiva Brandão’s speech and addressed the military (and the country, as his words reached the newspapers) to tell the officers present (and those absent): “The sacrifices that are required of them in Africa today are heavy, without a doubt. But they are linked to a centuries-old action in which the country has always owed its greatness and projection to the efforts of its soldiers..”.
“Consequences of the energy crisis have not stopped”
While the military oscillated between vassalage and conspiracy, the lives of the Portuguese continued with the prices to increase. Inflation was soaring, Caetano knew the risks of rising prices. He took advantage of the inauguration of the new Minister of State, Mário de Oliveira (and eight other government officials) to state – “we have to fight against inflation: but in the most next time we will have to resign ourselves to seeing some prices increase. The consequences of the energy crisis have not stopped (…).”
On the other side of the Atlantic, the President of the United States Richard Nixon threw “a big punch on the table, as least diplomatically as possiblel, to – according to observers – adjust the pace of the European allies or to create dissension among them such that they allow an easy imposition of the will of the United States”, reports the evening Diário de Lisboa on the front page of March 16, without any reference to the attempted military insurrection that morning.
On Sunday the 17th, the afternoon newspaper A Capital reported on Saturday’s events, and reported that “the surrender of the insurgent soldiers of the 5th Infantry Regiment, from Caldas da Rainha, put an end to a period of great tension that lasted around 20 hours at the end of last night. and was accompanied by several events that involved military authorities” and was fought at the gates of Lisbon.
Spinolists command march
The departure from Caldas occurred three weeks after the book by António de Spínola “Portugal and the Future”, every author’s dream: 50 thousand copies sold between 9am and 3pm on the day it went on sale (data from the Apolo 70 bookstore, in Lisbon) great demand throughout the country, 230 thousand copies published in eight months with 20% copyright previously negotiated by the general’s brother.
More than that, the The book stirred the minds of thousands of people who read it, because it questioned the Colonial War and proposed a non-military solution to the conflict which implied the creation of a political federation of Portuguese states. And this uprising of hopeful thought caused the Spínola’s absence from the rheumatic brigade ceremony on March 14 caused a huge uproar among the military who saw him as a leader. Or rather, an uproar that fueled their desire to act, creating conditions for a coup that would remove Caetano from power and resolve the captains’ demands.
The failed coup on March 16th was the work of the Spinolistas “to get ahead of themselves”, April captain Carlos Matos Gomes assures Expresso. This view is shared by Spínola’s biographer, professor Luís Nuno Rodrigues, for whom the failed coup of March 16 “it was an attempt carried out by officers of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) attached to General Spínola”.
April 25, 1974 would have occurred with or without March 16. Matos Gomes separates the waters between captains and spinolistas of the 16th of Marchdespite the latter having (almost) all converged and flowed into the Armed Forces Movement.
João Céu e Silva, author of the book “the General who started the 25th of April two months before the Captains”, remembers that Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho “was the only element common to both groups” and that Melo Antunes himself – one of the undisputed MFA strategists – made it known that he would step aside if Othello did not prepare the plans for the revolution with detail and security, which would happen with the review of plans and security confirmations.
Expresso, in its first edition after the attempt, reports that “a movement with ill-defined characteristics and purposes (…) the incident was resolved in strictly military terms at around 4:30 pm, thus putting an end to the demonstration that brought the military column to the gates of Lisbon”.
There were many detainees, the press mentioned 200, an official note announced 33, Pide believed it had the situation under control, and the preparation for the 25th of April followed the network of contacts and plans established from Guinea to Mozambique, which had an important moment in the Metropolis with the organization of a meeting on a hill in Alcáçovas, where “136 officers from all arms and services of the Armed Forces attended, in reaction to decree-laws no. 353/73 and 409/73. The majority of those present decided to continue contesting the aforementioned decrees, joining 51 officers serving in Guinea-Bissau and 97 serving in Angola”.
This is the chronicle written by the Portuguese press in those hectic days of March when the rheumatic brigade was fighting to make its ankylosed ideas prevail, and the United States demanded Israel’s total withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
