Francisco da Costa Gomes
Costa Gomes presided over the two years in which Portugal lost an empire, nearly had a civil war, and became a democracy instead. He was a general and a mathematician by training, dismissed from the high command in March 1974 for refusing to declare loyalty to the government, which is what made him acceptable to the officers who overthrew it a month later. He became president in September when the first post-revolutionary president, a conservative general who wanted a federation with the colonies rather than their independence, resigned after failing to stop the leftward movement of the revolution. The decolonisation was the fastest in European history. Guinea-Bissau was recognised in 1974, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Angola all in 1975, and around half a million Portuguese settlers - the retornados, some five per cent of the country's population - arrived in a fortnight or two at Lisbon airport with what they could carry. Angola went straight into a civil war that lasted twenty-seven years and drew in Cuba, South Africa and both superpowers. At home 1975 was the hot summer. Banks and insurance were nationalised, estates in the south were occupied by their labourers, a communist-aligned faction of the officers' movement held the Lisbon garrison, and in November paratroopers seized airbases in what was either a coup or a provocation depending on who is asked. It was put down without much bloodshed by a moderate commander, and the constituent assembly elected that April - in a genuinely free vote that the far left had wanted postponed and lost badly - produced a constitution in 1976. Costa Gomes handed the presidency to an elected successor that summer, which is the achievement: he was the head of state through the eighteen months in which the revolution could have gone another way, and it did not.
- Lived: 1914 CE – 2001 CE
- Nationality: Portuguese
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
