Q: What do the Eurovision Song Contest and carnation flowers have in common?
A: They both played a part in changing the course of life for the people of Portugal.
April 25th in Portugal is a national holiday called Freedom Day. It remembers the Carnation Revolution.
Photo by chay tessari on Unsplash
In 1926, a far-right coup seized control of Portugal. The regime was headed by Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar. He ruled until 1968 when he had a stroke and was replaced by Marcello Caetano.
Portugal had been struggling to keep hold of its huge colonial empire in Africa. People were rising up against the fascist empire and there was support from a growing group of left-wing protestors in Portugal for a military coup. The concern was that the military would not be strong enough to overthrow the the government and one right wing dictator would just be replaced by another one.
For life to change, it would take a new approach to ‘overthrowing’ the old.
(Step 1. Get ready to go forward differently)
On 24 April 1974 at 10.55am, the Portuguese entry to that year’s Eurovision Song Contest was played on the radio. It was called ‘And After the Farewell’. Normally it would just be another song on the radio, but on this day it had a special significance. It was the secret signal to the troops that everything was ready to proceed.
(Step 2. Take action believing in the end result)
The army asked civilians to stay at home the next day, 25 April, the day of the planned overthrow. The people didn’t follow this advice and instead ordinary people took to the streets in their thousands joining soldiers in jubilation believing that somehow the overthrow would come.
(Step 3. Let go of exactly how the dream will come true. You’ll be surprised!)
That day the Lisbon Flower Market was full of carnations, the seasonal flowers were in abundance. There are several stories as to what exactly happened next, but one is that a soldier asked a woman for a cigarette. She didn’t have one so instead she offered him a red carnation. The soldier put the carnation flower in the barrel of his shotgun. Other soldiers started doing the same until there were a multitude of guns with carnations in the barrels.
It was an incredibly peaceful revolution. Hardly any shots were fired. It became known as the Carnation Revolution and is now celebrated as Freedom Day.
What can we learn from this?
We love the concept of freedom. Freedom to travel, to see the world, to plan our time, to go on adventures, to explore and live life to the full! Freedom was the big goal on our dream board a few years ago. Today Phil and I are so grateful to live a life of freedom we used to just dream about.
Like the Carnation Revolution, if you want things to change, you’ve got to do something different.
First of all we got ready to go forward differently.
We started to adopt a new way of thinking. We began to consciously and deliberately decide what end result we desired.
Second, we took action.
We made a list of baby steps and took consistent action, anything we could think of and do, in the general direction of our goal. On occasion, we acted as if we had already achieved our end result – to make the belief more real. We imagined and visualised achieving a life of freedom long before we actually lived it for real.
Third, we let go of how it would actually happen.
We planned and we took actions but we stopped insisting how we would achieve our goal of freedom. Honestly, we had no idea. Letting go of the hows and letting the Universe work out the details was totally liberating! And what’s more, we could never have imagined it would work out in the way that it has. Our own plans would have been far more limiting and no where near as exciting as they’ve turned out! Let go and let it flow.
Over the last few years, Phil and I have experienced our own version of the Carnation Revolution. Today we too celebrate Freedom.
Is it time for you to throw off the old and bring in the new in your life?
