Caeiro, a member of the Communist Party, has died at the age of 91. His act gave name to a revolution remembered for its absence of bloodshed.
Celeste Caeiro, the woman who gave her name to the revolution in Portugal with her carnations, died this Friday at the age of 91, her granddaughter Carol confirmed on her social networks. The death occurred when this year, on April 25, the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolutionwho put an end to the dictatorship.
With a Spanish mother, this woman I worked in the closet of a restaurant in the center of Lisbon, the ‘Sifire’when the uprising took place.
As she explained in an interview in 2014, the restaurant owners wanted to make a party of it April 25, 1974 to celebrate the first anniversary of the branch and they had bought flowers.
When she arrived at work that day, she found the door closed and the manager told her and the rest of the employees that they weren’t opening because there was a revolution going on and that they had to take the flowers with them so they wouldn’t spoil.
Against the advice of his bosses, Caeiro decided not to go straight home to find out what was going on, but not before taking some with him. red and white carnations.
He took the subway to Lisbon’s Rossio Squareright at the beginning of Largo do Carmo, where the fascist tanks They had been waiting anxiously for new orders since sunrise.
“I looked at them and said to a soldier: What is this? What are they doing here? “We are going to the Carmo barracks, where Marcello Caetano, the president (heir to the Salazar regime) is,” they replied, according to Caeiro’s account.
It was around nine in the morning and the soldier, who had been on guard for a few hours, asked the woman for a cigarette. Since she did not smoke, but felt bad about not being able to help the soldier, she offered him one of the carnations she had with her.
“I grabbed a carnation, the first one was red, and he accepted it. Because I’m so small and he was on top of the tank, he had to reach out and grab the carnation and put it in his gun,” she said.
Immediately the remaining soldiers imitated their companion and asked the woman for one of those red and white carnations, which she carried under her arm, until they were all distributed.
She, a member of the Communist Party, had not expected that simple gesture It would go down in history. And hours after that episode, several florists worked hard to make sure no one missed a carnation, making them an icon of freedom.
His act gave a name to a revolution that will live on in the memory absence of bloodshed.
Source: EITB
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
