In 1801, Spain, under Napoleonic auspices, invaded Portugal, handing over command of the invading forces to Manuel Godoy, valid of the crown and favorite of the queen consort, Maria Luísa.
The plan for the military operation consisted of dismembering and dividing the country, with Godoy harboring the personal ambition of creating a small country south of the Tagus for his own personal use.
It was a short and disastrous war for Portugal, which found itself deprived of Olivença and its terminus, to this day.
It is said, by the way, that Godoy, when he entered Portugal, picked a bouquet of orange blossoms, which he sent to the queen as proof of his affection… and hence this sad episode in Portuguese historiography became known as the War of the Oranges.
Despite the military and political setback, the country was not divided and maintained its sovereignty and independence.
After just over two centuries, no other Godoy was needed to try to divide the country again.
In fact, what was witnessed in the Assembly of the Republic, as part of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the 25th of November 1975, where the acrimony between the political parties present, in some moments, even bordering on insult, and culminating in the war of carnations and roses in the decoration of the hemicycle, fully demonstrated that the force of arms is not always necessary to divide a country and its institutions.
At the same time, in the seminar on the “25th of November – 50 years later”, which took place at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, we saw the disproportionate attempt of several of the participating entities to impose their narratives on that date, reaching the point where some, regrettably, did not refrain from criticizing, in an unfair and biased way, those who, previously, not sharing their convictions, took positions contrary to theirs, and who in their understanding they markedly contradicted the spirit of April and its achievements.
It will not make sense that half a century after the 25th of April and the 25th of November, there continue to be people and entities that assume themselves as exclusive guardians of those dates and do not admit that they belong to all Portuguese, regardless of the way in which each one may interpret the events that were in their genesis.
Certainly, without the 25th of April, as the main date of Portuguese democracy, there would have been no place for the 25th of November, which, like other episodes throughout the political process that the country has gone through in the last 50 years, was nothing more than the result of the profound transformations and changes experienced during that period that, in a decisive way, helped to forge and consolidate democracy in Portugal.
It is for these reasons that the date of 25 November, now commemorated, should have required a rigorous and enlightened interpretation, not biased or unreasonable, of the events that gave rise to it, a fact that the Portuguese would truly appreciate and that, most likely, would have exempted the President of the Republic from his call for temperance…
Lieutenant General