At 4am on 25 April 1974, Filipe Villard Cortez got the signal. He barricaded the door of the Monte Real air base commander’s room and cut his phone line. A few hours earlier, Portugal’s Carnation Revolution had begun.
Cortez was 21 at the time, a commissioned air force officer who wanted the democratisation of Portugal and the end of its colonial rule. In the weeks before the revolution, he had become involved in meetings with the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) – the group that instigated the military coup that toppled Portugal’s authoritarian Estado Novo regime, ending its war to prevent independence in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.
