In October 1974, Francisco Franco’s dictatorship commissioned a poll to find out the opinion of the Spaniards about the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, which it classified as “reserved use” and ultimately kept secret until 2023.
The “Report of an opinion poll in Madrid and Barcelona on the political situation in Portugal”, with the headline “USO RESERVADO” on the front page, was released this year, when Spain’s Center for Sociological Research (CIS) decided to publish all documents disclosing those in his care that were reserved and in some cases ignored, because “the boxes they had been in for a long time had never been opened,” explains Lusa, the president of the organization, José Felix Tezanos.
The decision to release these documents was made in connection with the 60-year history of the CIS, the successor to the Instituto de Opinião Pública, founded in 1963.
The investigation of the Carnation Revolution (April 25, 1974) was conducted in Madrid and Barcelona, on October 8 and 9, 1974, one week after the resignation of General António de Spínola from the presidency of the Republic.
The five-question survey asked 1,102 people whether they knew in which country there had been a revolution in April, whether they felt sympathy or antipathy with the events in Portugal, whether they thought the change would be for the better or the worse for the country and whether opinions about the Portuguese Revolution had changed after Spínola’s resignation.
“In general, it is men, young people, individuals with higher education and from the higher social strata, as well as the inhabitants of Barcelona, who are better informed and who also feel more sympathy and optimism regarding political changes that going on in Portugal,” the report concludes.
In a Spanish society, still under dictatorship, with censorship and restrictions on press freedom, 48% said they knew that a political change had taken place in Portugal. Among them, the majority sympathized with the revolution.
“There was an element of concern,” explains José Félix Tezanos, who added: “It was known that Spanish society was evolving, that part of Spanish society, some media, looked at Portugal with sympathy”.
The inquiry was conducted in response to Spinola’s resignation, probably because there was a greater concern at the time, “with the possible drift of the revolution”, which was initially seen as “democratic, Europeanist and at some point there is concern would have an even more radical evolution,” says José Félix Tezanos.
However, he adds: “Spanish public opinion, in Madrid and Barcelona, the great cities”, continued in October 1974, five months after the revolution, “this freedom movement with sympathy, even with envy”.
“I think there was a healthy envy back then,” says José Félix Tezanos, who was born in Santander in 1946 and who has fond memories of that time, when many Spaniards, like him, traveled to Portugal to see “the freedom movement”. in the field, that happened there.
The report was ultimately not published and, like others made at the time, only members of General Franco’s government had access to the document.
The “very clear” conclusion of the study, according to Tezanos, may have worried Spanish rulers, but it is likely that in 1974, when Franco was already at the end of his life, and after decades of dictatorship, it was not like that for everyone, because at that time the Spanish regime already had in it the so-called reformists, who eventually became one of the protagonists of Spain’s transition to democracy.
“What we see are young people, middle-aged, with a higher education, in the cities of Madrid and Barcelona, the most dynamic part of Spanish society”, sympathizing with the Portuguese revolution, which ended peacefully with a dictatorship , and possibly the regime’s reformists, “were not worried about this,” he says.
“Actually, I think that later influenced the way we look at the democratic transition [espanhola]which was greatly encouraged by people coming out of the regime,” he argues.
José Félix Tezanos recalls in this context the “curious data” from “from then on” that Spanish studies ask constitutionalists to understand whether it would be possible to move “on the basis of the laws of the regime” towards a democracy”.
“Several studies confirmed that it was so” and in 1978 Spain had a new constitution that restored democracy to the country, also in this case peacefully.
The data of the “secret” survey of April 25 has now been made public, in collaboration with the Embassy of Portugal in Madrid, given the historic nature of the document, as a contribution to the joint cultural program between Portugal and Spain agreed in the framework of the 50th anniversary celebration of April 25 (which will take place in 2024).
Source: DN
