Editorial – Maria Inácia Rezola

April, today and tomorrow

The celebrations of 25 April gave me the opportunity to explore the Portugal of 1974-1975 for the first time. Following the invitation to be part of a research team that was preparing an exhibition to commemorate the anniversary, I visited the archives, listened to radio broadcasts and speeches, watched television programmes and films, analysed photographs, and read the press of the time. The world that opened up to me belonged to the past, to history. But it was a present history, full of passion, with visible and lasting traces in the Portugal of 1994. Twenty years after the events, the history of the revolution was still very much alive.

Three decades later, I am facing a new challenge: coordinating the executive committee of the 50th anniversary commemorations of 25 April. Today, the 1974-1975 Revolution is recognised as a historical object, an object of interest for a large number of social scientists from the most diverse fields, and a field of interdisciplinary research par excellence. Many of the archives relating to this period are now accessible. We have also benefited from the work of academics and journalists in collecting testimonials. The history of the Portuguese Revolution has come of age and we have a particularly interesting collection of studies that allow us to reconstruct and understand the crucial part of this pivotal moment in contemporary Portuguese history. However, the challenges are many, at a time when those who wrote and lived this history are disappearing and most Portuguese were born after 25 April. Understanding, explaining and disseminating the history and memory of the Revolution are urgent tasks that can only be achieved through an intense dialogue between academia and society at large.

Maria Inácia Rezola, Executive Commissioner of the Commission for the Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of 25 April, is the author of the editorial for the CEIS20 newsletter, which anticipates the 49th anniversary of the 25 April Revolution.