The Captains of April 25: The MFA-Moderates

Dr. Manuel met Nuno Fisher Lopes Pires, known to everyone simply as “Fisher,” on Monday, 10 December 1990, at the headquarters of the Associação 25 de Abril in Lisbon. He was quiet, deliberate and a deep thinker, almost shy at first, and he listened sympathetically and answered with carefully chosen words; it was clear that he was a man the others trusted. When Dr. Manuel observed that his name had an English ring to it and asked whether he had family in England or the United States, Fisher answered that he knew of none outside Portugal.

One of the few lieutenant colonels to take part in the meetings of the Movement of Captains, he was one of the six officers who directed the military operations of 25 April 1974 from the command post at the Pontinha barracks, on the edge of Lisbon, alongside Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, the operation’s strategist, Sanches Osório, Vítor Crespo, Hugo dos Santos and Garcia dos Santos; it was Fisher who asked Garcia dos Santos to take charge of the operation’s communications.

He was appointed to the National Salvation Junta after 28 September 1974 and joined the Council of the Revolution when it was created in March 1975. A founding member of the Associação 25 de Abril, he later coordinated the fifteenth- and twentieth-anniversary commemorations of 25 April and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Liberty. He died on 11 July 2013, before the surviving officers of the command post gathered at Pontinha for the fortieth anniversary in 2014.

Dr. Manuel met Pezarat Correia at the offices of the Associação 25 de Abril in Lisbon on Monday, 10 December 1990. He was then working on his doctorate and writing the books that would follow, and he was highly intelligent and engaging, a thinker with a deep sense of history and of his own place in it.

Born in Porto in 1932, Pedro de Pezarat Correia was educated at the Colégio Militar and took his degree in military sciences at the Escola do Exército in 1954. He served six tours in the colonial wars, in India, Mozambique, Angola and Guinea, and was in Angola in 1974, where he became one of the leaders of the MFA there; he sat on the Portuguese delegation that negotiated the Alvor Agreement with the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA in January 1975. He then commanded the Southern Military Region, headquartered at Évora, through the agrarian reform of 1975, and sat on the Council of the Revolution.

He retired as a major general and turned to teaching and scholarship: he founded and taught the course in geopolitics and geostrategy at the Faculty of Economics of the Universidade de Coimbra, lectured at the Instituto da Defesa Nacional and the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, and wrote, among other books, Descolonização de Angola: A Jóia da Coroa do Império Português, Questionar Abril, Angola: Do Alvor a Lusaka and a Manual de Geopolítica e Geoestratégia. In 2017, at the age of eighty-five, he received his doctorate from the Universidade de Coimbra with distinction and praise.

Vasco Lourenço was extraordinary. Dr. Manuel spent part of two days with him, Monday and Tuesday, 10 and 11 December 1990, at the headquarters of the Associação 25 de Abril, which Lourenço helped found in 1982 and has led, working to preserve the history of that day. He welcomed Dr. Manuel warmly, was engaged, open and very informative, and helped open the doors that made the other interviews possible. After the interview he drove Dr. Manuel to the metro stop on his way to pick up his children.

Born on 19 June 1942 in Lousa, near Castelo Branco, the son of small shopkeepers, he was an infantry officer who had served in Guinea from 1969 to 1971. He was one of the organizers of the Movement of Captains and coordinated its first meeting, at Alcáçovas on 9 September 1973; for that role the regime transferred him by force to Ponta Delgada on 15 March 1974, which is why he spent 25 April in the Azores.

He went on to serve on the MFA’s political commission, the Council of State (from July 1974), the Council of Twenty and the Council of the Revolution, on which he sat from March 1975 until its dissolution in 1982, and he was one of the signatories of the Document of the Nine. Named commander of the Lisbon Military Region in the autumn of 1975, he coordinated the planning that Ramalho Eanes carried out for the military response of November 25, and in August 1976 he became military governor of Lisbon. He passed to the reserve in 1988.

Years later, when Dr. Manuel was preparing the book, Lourenço agreed to answer his questions again in writing, because the original interview had never been transcribed.

Dr. Manuel met Vítor Alves in his Lisbon office on the afternoon of Wednesday, 13 February 1991. It was a cold Lisbon winter day, and Alves greeted him with a warm, welcoming smile. His office looked out over a noisy square in old Lisbon. It had the feel of an old professor’s office, with all sorts of books and papers strewn about, and was quite a comfortable place.

Alves had an engaging and lively intellect, and he took up each question openly and at length; his kindness, charm and intellect were in full view. Of all the men Dr. Manuel met that year, he was among the most impressive.

Born in Mafra in 1935, he had served in Mozambique from 1958 to 1963 and in Angola from 1963 to 1966 and again from 1967 to 1970. He was a leading figure in the Movement of Captains and a member of the MFA’s political commission, and his home was the setting for several of the conspirators’ meetings. After 25 April he served as a minister without portfolio and as the MFA’s spokesman, and later as minister of education, and he went on to serve as an adviser to President Ramalho Eanes.

His demand for moderation among his fellow officers was a critical factor in advancing the West European social democratic frame in Portugal, and he was one of the signatories of the Document of the Nine. He died in Lisbon on 9 January 2011.

On Wednesday, 13 February 1991, Dr. Manuel met Vítor Crespo. Early in their conversation Crespo asked where his family was from, and when Dr. Manuel told him Xartinho and Mata do Rei, he lit up. His ama [nursemaid], he said, had been from Mata do Rei; perhaps Dr. Manuel knew her, or perhaps she was his cousin. Dr. Manuel told him that they are all cousins.

The interview that followed lasted nearly two hours. Crespo was generous and warm, a man of quick intelligence and real courtesy. He had hosted some of the early meetings of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) at his house in Porto de Mós, and sitting with him Dr. Manuel understood at once how his charisma and kindness had lent themselves to the planning of the coup; he was a man the other officers could trust.

When the interview ended and the tape recorder was off, Crespo asked whether he would like to learn something more about his own Portuguese roots. He led Dr. Manuel up a series of staircases, through a security checkpoint, and into a temperature-controlled room of old manuscripts at the Biblioteca Central da Marinha. From a metal shelf he pulled what seemed to be an interminable scroll, handed it to him, and asked what he made of it.

It held pages from Vasco da Gama’s personal diary of the 1498 expedition to India. Crespo pointed out a stain at the top of one page that he said came from da Gama’s own cup, and held the page up to the light so that Dr. Manuel could see it. The interview had been about the revolution of 1974; the visit ended in the fifteenth century.

Dr. Manuel met José Manuel da Costa Neves, known simply as Costa Neves, in his Lisbon office on Thursday, 14 February 1991. He was quiet and courteous, a serious and careful thinker, more a listener than a talker, and his answers were plain and unvarnished and full of useful insight.

Born in Caldas da Rainha in October 1940, he was an aeronautical engineer and a major in the Air Force. A member of the Movement of Captains, he led the occupation of Rádio Clube Português on 25 April 1974. At 3:32 that morning his group, drawn from the 5th Light Infantry Battalion (Batalhão de Caçadores 5) and including Major Campos Moura and Captain Santos Coelho, entered the station and took it without incident; Santos Coelho reported to the command post at Pontinha with the code phrase “México ocupado sem incidentes” [Mexico occupied without incident], and from then on the station served as the movement’s voice.

Costa Neves had been expected to read the MFA’s communiqués himself, but Joaquim Furtado, the announcer on duty, volunteered when he learned what was under way and read the first one, drafted by Vítor Alves, at 4:26.

Costa Neves was named to the Council of the Revolution when it was created in March 1975 and was one of the signatories of the Document of the Nine. In April 2024, for the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution, the Air Force honored him among its own Captains of April in an exhibition at the Museu do Ar in Sintra.

Dr. Manuel met Ramalho Eanes on Thursday, 14 February 1991, at his office off the Avenida da República in Lisbon, close to Saldanha. It was an extraordinary interview. Eanes was a leader, very respectable and very elegant, somewhat distant but responsive, and tired. Throughout the hour and a half they spent together, his secretary kept bringing him bicas [espressos]; he drank about six.

Born in 1935 in Alcains, near Castelo Branco, Eanes had served through the colonial wars and was in Angola on 25 April 1974; back in Lisbon he headed RTP, the public television, from October 1974 to March 1975. It was Eanes who directed the military operation of November 25, 1975, that closed the most radical phase of the revolution, and he became army chief of staff that December.

Elected president in June 1976 and re-elected in December 1980, he served until March 1986, presiding over the Council of the Revolution until it was abolished in 1982. He then led the Partido Renovador Democrático [Democratic Renewal Party] from 1986 to 1987, and at the time of the interview he was sitting in the Assembleia da República as a deputy for Lisbon. He later declined the honorary rank of marshal.

Dr. Manuel met Amadeu Garcia dos Santos at his Lisbon apartment on Friday, 15 February 1991. He spoke with the settled authority of a commander, and the way he spoke showed both his leadership and a real decency; he answered each question meticulously.

In 1974 he was teaching at the Military Academy when Fisher Lopes Pires asked him to take charge of military communications for the planned operation of 25 April, and he went on to help plan and carry out the overthrow of the regime as one of the six officers who led it.

He later served as secretary of state for public works in the second, third and fourth provisional governments, all headed by Vasco Gonçalves, and then as head of the Military Household of President Ramalho Eanes. He was chief of staff of the army from 1982 to 1983, and later presided over the Junta Autónoma de Estradas, the national roads authority, which he left after denouncing cases of corruption. He died at his home on 4 July 2025, at the age of eighty-nine.

In March 1991 Dr. Manuel traveled by train from Coimbra to a Fulbright conference in Berlin, a long journey of about two days, stopping overnight in Paris in each direction, and while in Paris he did research on the revolution at the library of the Institut d’Études Politiques, where he had studied a decade earlier.

Natércia Coimbra of the Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril had given him Ernesto Melo Antunes’s number and confirmed that he could get in touch, and they arranged to meet at Melo Antunes’s house outside Paris. After the Council of the Revolution was dissolved in 1982 and he passed to the reserve, Melo Antunes had stepped back from Portuguese politics and gone to work for UNESCO in Paris, first as a consultant and then as its deputy director-general.

Instead of meeting, on Tuesday, 26 March 1991, the two spoke by telephone for about an hour. Melo Antunes was gracious and forthcoming. He spoke about how he had tried to make a difference, to guide the revolution toward its democratic promise and away from any derailment into violence or civil war; for him the revolution had always been about giving power back to the people, a democratic power to be expressed through elections.

He credited Vítor Alves as a major influence on his own thinking and suggested that Dr. Manuel interview him. Told that he already had, Melo Antunes said that then there was not much for him to add. He was modest and generous with his time, without a trace of self-importance.

Born in Lisbon on 2 October 1933, Ernesto Augusto de Melo Antunes was an artillery officer who served three tours in Angola, in 1963–1965, 1966–1968 and 1971–1973, and was promoted to major in 1972. He came late to the Movement of Captains, attending his first meeting only in 1974, but he quickly became its leading political mind: he wrote the document O Movimento, as Forças Armadas e a Nação [The Movement, the Armed Forces and the Nation] and was one of the authors of the MFA Programme.

After 25 April he sat on the MFA’s coordinating commission and the Council of State, served as minister without portfolio in the second and third provisional governments and as minister of foreign affairs in the fourth and sixth, and in 1974 led the working group that drew up the economic and social plan that bears his name, which was approved but set aside after 11 March 1975.

He was the principal author of the Document of the Nine in August 1975, which turned the revolution toward moderation, and from 1976 to 1982 he presided over the Constitutional Commission of the Council of the Revolution, the forerunner of the Constitutional Court. After the Council was dissolved he became a councillor of state, a post he held until his death, and in 1991 he joined the Socialist Party. He died in Sintra on 10 August 1999 and was promoted posthumously to colonel in 2004. His political biography, by Maria Inácia Rezola, drawn from his personal papers, appeared in 2012.

Dr. Manuel met Marques Júnior early one morning at the Assembleia da República. The building was empty when he was let in, and he found Marques Júnior in a quiet office with just a few lights on.

They had been introduced by the father of Dr. Manuel’s friend Aida Moreira da Silva, Didi, whom he knew from Porto de Mós and who is now a professor of chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra; her father, of Rio Maior, had served in parliament. Marques Júnior had kind words for Dr. Manuel, and he asked how he knew Didi’s father and about his family. He was careful, deliberate and somber in everything he said.

António Alves Marques Júnior, born in 1946, had been a 27-year-old army officer in the Movement of Captains on 25 April 1974 and then the youngest member of the Council of the Revolution; he remained on the Council until it was dissolved in 1982. By the time of the interview he had been a deputy since 1985, first elected for the Partido Renovador Democrático [Democratic Renewal Party], and in the elections of October 1991 he was elected on the Socialist list; he sat for the Socialists until 2011, and at the end of his life he chaired the council that oversees Portugal’s intelligence services.

Asked what it had been like to be the youngest member of the Council, and what he had brought to it, he said it had been the honor of a lifetime. He had learned a great deal from his MFA brothers. He believed in social justice, he said, but not in totalitarianism, and not in MFA control at any cost; the revolution had been about democracy. He died in Lisbon on 31 December 2012.