201425th April - 40 Years - First Day Cover

The military coup of 25th of April of 1974 in Portugal unexpectedly opened the way to the third wave of democratisation processes in Southern Europe, which would extend to Greece in 1975 and Spain in 1977. In the following decade, the end of the Cold War would trigger a similar process in Latin America and in Central and Eastern Europe. At a time of no major pro democratising international constraints and still in the midst of the cold war, the political rupture brought about by the Portuguese military gave rise to a simultaneous process of democratisation and decolonisation of the last lingering European colonial empire. The singularity of the Portuguese case was precisely the democratising intervention of the movement of the captains, rare if not unique in the XX century. In contrast to Spain, Portugal experienced a transition through collapse and Greece through rupture; however the Portuguese democratisation was accompanied by a strong crisis of the State.