Military against Salazar: Abrilada of 1961

Abstract

Created by António Salazar, the New State relied heavily on the sup-port of the armed forces. Nevertheless, in April 1961, a group of gener-als led by the Minister of Defense tried to remove him from power. Their dissatisfaction was caused not by the system, but by the war in Angola, the first stage of which was not successful for Portugal. Salazar was blamed for not listening to warnings from the military and intelli-gence agencies. No reforms were conducted in the overseas possessions to prevent the revolt, no additional forces were sent to the colony. At first, the military planned to remove Salazar in a constitutional way, according to the rules and institutions of the New State. First, the mili-tary had to obtain the support of the President Américo Thomaz. It re-sulted in many days of negotiations with the head of the country, in the hope that he would take the side of the military. It was only when it became clear that Tomás remained loyal to Salazar the generals decided to put troops on the streets. However, this decision came too late. Sala-zar and Tomás gave orders to remove the rebels from their posts, an-nouncing that on the radio. As a result, the chain of command was bro-ken, and the conspirators no longer had confidence that the troops would obey them. As a result, this attempted military coup did not go beyond the cabinet negotiations.