The Long Nap After the Revolution: A Memory Hole Where History Should Be

In April 1974, Portugal pulled off a revolution so poetic it read like fiction. A military coup ended Europe’s longest-running dictatorship with barely a shot fired. Soldiers stuck red carnations in their rifles. People danced in the streets. No bloodshed, no purges, no tribunals. Just freedom—and the promise that the past was over.

But memory is fragile. And Portugal, it seems, chose to forget.

Fifty years later, the ghosts of Salazar’s regime are no longer ghosts. They’re marching, shouting, tweeting, and punching. A Black actor is beaten outside a theatre in Lisbon. Social workers are attacked for feeding the homeless in Porto. A bus driver in Cascais refuses a Black child entry, calling them “an animal.” A man is assaulted by a neo-Nazi in Guimarães—in broad daylight, the third far-right attack in just four days. A Cape Verdean father of three is shot in the back by police in Amadora. Teen footballers are bombarded with monkey emojis. A kid who likes to read is publicly harassed for it—because he’s Black.

These aren’t scattered incidents. They’re a pattern. And the question isn’t just how did we get here? It’s why didn’t we see it coming?

The Revolution Was Televised — But Never Taught

From 1933 to 1974, Portugal lived under the Estado Novo: a fascist regime ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar. It was authoritarian Catholicism, censorship, secret police, and colonial war dressed up as national stability. When the revolution came, it was peaceful—but the peace came with a cost: silence.

Portugal never put its past on trial. No truth commissions. No major reparations. No reckoning. Instead of remembering, the country moved on. Or rather, it buried the trauma beneath slogans of progress.

Schools barely touched the dictatorship. The PIDE secret police became a passing acronym. The wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau were condensed to footnotes. The revolution itself was mythologized as a spontaneous flowering of freedom, without much reflection on what had to be uprooted.

A generation grew up hearing about carnations but not about colonial massacres. They know about democracy, but not the brutality that made it necessary. And in this memory vacuum, a new narrative took root—one that rebrands the past as “a time of order,” and blames today’s instability not on inequality, but on “outsiders.”

Chega and the Machinery of Denial

Founded in 2019, Chega is Portugal’s far-right populist party, now the third-largest force in parliament. Led by André Ventura, it mixes anti-migrant demagoguery, culture war rhetoric, and open nostalgia for the dictatorship’s “values.”

Ventura blames “gypsies” and immigrants for crime, calls antiracism campaigns “nonsense,” and once praised the "discipline" of Salazar’s era. He defends police violence, mocks LGBTQ+ rights, and claims Portugal is under attack from “cultural Marxism.”

And many listen—because they were never taught to recognize fascism when it returns in a suit and tie. Chega doesn’t speak to memory; it exploits its absence.

Violence With a Routine

What was once unthinkable is now weekly, sometimes daily.

• In Lisbon, actor Adérito Lopes is attacked by far-right aggressors outside a theatre—just before performing in a tribute to Camões. One of the attackers was previously convicted for participating in the 1995 murder of Alcindo Monteiro, a Black man lynched by skinheads.
• In Porto, volunteers from CASA, a homelessness support group, are beaten and insulted for distributing food. The attackers shout that they’re “feeding Africans” and raise fascist salutes.
• In Cascais, a Carris bus driver tells a Black child: “I don’t transport animals.”
• In Amadora, 43-year-old Cape Verdean Odair Moniz is fatally shot by PSP police. Authorities claim he had a knife—but activists allege the weapon was planted post-mortem. Public trust collapses.
• In Guimarães, a man is beaten in broad daylight by a known neo-Nazi—the third far-right assault in four days. The case is passed to the Public Prosecutor.
• On social media, Portugal’s under-17 football team, made up largely of Black players, becomes a lightning rod for racist abuse. Commenters bombard them with monkey emojis and slurs, despite their national jersey. Sport was supposed to unite. Now it exposes division.
• In a Lisbon school, a quiet young boy—known for always carrying a book—is mocked and racially harassed after proudly showing his public library card. His crime? Being Black and intellectually curious. The message is clear: know your place, and keep your head down.

This is not just “polarization.” This is a society hemorrhaging its democratic muscle memory.

Lusotropicalism: The Lie That Lingers

Portugal has long wrapped its colonial history in the warm myth of lusotropicalismo—the idea that it ruled with kindness, mixed cultures freely, and embraced difference. Unlike the British or French, so the myth goes, the Portuguese were “softer” colonizers.

But the facts say otherwise. Portugal was among the first European empires to trade in African slaves and the last to give up its colonies—after brutal wars of independence in the 1960s and 70s. And yet, the average Portuguese schoolchild hears more about Vasco da Gama than about the massacre at Wiriyamu.

That myth of gentleness makes it hard to name today’s racism—because it suggests racism here “isn’t like elsewhere.” And if racism doesn’t exist, then how can Black teens, migrants, and Roma communities complain without being seen as ungrateful?

The Institutions Are Not Holding

The judiciary is slow. The police protect their own. The press walks carefully around the word fascist. Politicians call attacks “regrettable incidents” instead of ideologically motivated violence. Hate speech online is rarely prosecuted. And Chega continues to rise.

Portugal is facing a storm of far-right aggression with the tools of politeness and denial. But silence is no defense. It’s an invitation.

What the Carnations Didn’t Teach

Germany had Nuremberg. South Africa had Truth and Reconciliation. Even Spain, still conflicted, has exhumed Franco. Portugal had a flower—and a long nap.

Now the nap is over.

What’s needed is not just condemnation, but confrontation: with history, with whiteness, with empire, with policing, with denial. Children need to learn what happened—what was defeated, and what it looked like—so they can recognize it when it returns.

Because it has returned.

Remember — or Repeat

If a country forgets what fascism feels like, it will stop recognizing when it happens again.

When children are harassed for reading, when footballers are insulted for being Black, when a man is shot in the back and gaslighted by the state, when artists are assaulted and cops plant evidence, it’s not about “incivility” or “partisan division.”

It’s about power. And right now, that power is slipping into dangerous hands. Democracy isn’t just something you win once. It’s something you defend constantly—with memory, with vigilance, and with the courage to say: not again.