Putting the Revolution in Place – The Democracy’s Politics of Memory through the “Monuments to April 25th"

Abstract

This article proposes a reflection on the memory policies of democratic Portugal by mapping and analysing the ‘monuments to the 25^th of April’. The transformations of the first years of democracy resonated in public art, which began to celebrate figures, episodes and values that, for years, could only be evoked in private. Focussing on the sculptural evocations of the Revolution, we aim to identify the moments when they were erected, their geographical distribution, the spaces they occupy, their promoters and both the symbols and meanings they inscribe in the public space. From this general analysis, we move on to four case studies that are significant in terms of the trends, controversies and silences that characterise these tributes. These monuments constitute a privileged observatory of the disputes over the collective memory of democracy, serving, on the one hand, as strategies for fixing and normalising a certain idea of the Revolution and, on the other, as counter-narratives that resist official discourses.