“WEleste Caeiro, known as the ‘Celeste of carnations’, symbolically marked the beginning of the liberating dawn with her symbolic gesture of handing over to a soldier one of the carnations she carried with her. If today the April Revolution is known throughout the world as the Carnation Revolution, we owe it, firstly, to this singular gesture by Celeste Caeiro”, said the PCP councilor at Lisbon City Council, in a statement.
On the eve of marking the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April, which put an end to 48 years of dictatorship in Portugal, PCP councilors announced that they will present a proposal so that “just tribute can be paid to Celeste Caeiro, with an evocative monument and, in this sense, he is also awarded a decoration with the Medal of Merit of the City of Lisbon”.
According to the PCP, Celeste Caeiro is a woman of “strong convictions, humble and hardworking, national figure and communist militant”, from the city of Lisbon and who “deserves this recognition and appreciation”.
About to turn 91 (on May 2nd), sick and weak, Celeste Caeiro wants to parade on Avenida da Liberdade, in Lisbon, on Thursday, if her health allows her and someone will lend her a wheelchair.
Celeste Caeiro no longer wants to talk about the revolution and now gives the floor to her granddaughter, Carolina Caeiro Fontela, to “rectify gaps in 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, and only when she arrived at work, on April 25 1974, I knew there was a revolution taking place.
On that day, Carolina said, the ‘self-service’ had been running for a year, but it didn’t open because of the revolution and the boss, “who had ordered carnations to be bought to offer to customers and decorate the space, told the employees to take one branch each one”.
Celeste picked up her bunch of carnations and 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”, lamenting the “feeling of ingratitude of 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 Cravos while she was alive”.
Read Also: 25 April. Montemor-o-Novo Archive keeps memory of Agrarian Reform
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Tags: PCP Lisbon City Council proposes tribute Celeste dos Cravos
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