Forward 2024: History repeats itself as a Party!

In 2024, Portugal will celebrate, with great civic enthusiasm and intense popular mobilizations, the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974, with an extensive and diverse program that spans the entire country. The Avante Festival, which takes place between September 6 and 8, will certainly be one of the highlights of this calendar of celebrations.

Considered the largest political-cultural meeting in the country, the Festival promoted by the newspaper Forward!, linked to the Portuguese Communist Party, it has taken place every year since 1976. Its emergence is the result of the redemocratization process and the intense social and cultural transformations that took place in Portugal from April 1974 onwards.

Among the main legacies of the Carnation Revolution is the consolidation of a welfare state with democratic stability and guaranteed rights. In the face of the resurgence of far-right political expressions in Portugal, the symbolic power of the red carnation and the popular and transformative nature of this festive and poetic revolution have managed to promote broad unity in Portuguese society. On April 25, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets under the slogan “April 25th forever! Fascism never again!”, in one of the largest demonstrations in the country’s history.

There’s No Party Like This

The Avante Festival takes place annually in September at Quinta da Atalaia, on the outskirts of Lisbon, attracting thousands of people of all ages and regions of Portugal, with a large participation of international delegations.

Over the course of 3 days, the public can watch plays, demonstrations of popular and traditional culture, choral groups, dance and concerts of various musical genres (including classical music) on various stages, where dozens of groups of artists perform simultaneously. There are also various political debates, art exhibitions, book fairs, record fairs, craft fairs, among other sports and cultural programmes, including traditional games, ballet, cinema, a science exhibition, a children’s area, etc.

April in Avante

The Carnation Revolution is an almost omnipresent theme in this edition of the Avante Festival. Starting with the opening ceremony of the Festival, on the main stage (which is not by chance called “Palco 25 de Abril”) with a concert by the Lisbon Sinfonietta Orchestra, in a program where classical music dialogues with the classics of Portuguese popular song that inspired the youth of April, paying homage to artists such as Joly Braga Santos, Carlos Paredes and Zeca Afonso, author of the famous “Grândola, Vila Morena”, the signature song for the beginning of the movement of troops that overthrew the regime in 1974.

Brazil at the Party

Brazil joins in the tributes to the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution with a photography exhibition “April 25, 2024 – History Repeats Itself as a Party”. Created by producer and cultural manager Alexandre Santini, the exhibition features images recorded in Lisbon on April 25, 2024. “It is a personal and living record of the great event that was the Portuguese people celebrating April 25 in the streets, 50 years later. These are images that I took throughout this day, amid the emotion of witnessing this historic moment,” says Santini.

Brazilian culture is also present in the musical program. Highlights include the legendary punk rock band from ABC Paulista, Garotos Podres, and the singer from Minas Gerais, Bia Ferreira, an exponent of the new MMP (Música de Mulher Preta). Samba, pagode, capoeira and Maracatu are some of the cultural expressions of Brazil that will be present in the artistic and cultural program of the Festival.

Brazil’s political representation at this edition of the Avante Festival is diverse and significant. The Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) and the Workers’ Party (PT) maintain the traditional stalls in the international area of ​​the Festival, with typical drinks and food, a book fair and distribution of materials. This year’s highlight is the trilingual printed edition (Portuguese, French and English) of the Red Newspaperproduced by the PCdoB and the Maurício Grabois Foundation.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) Marx warns us that “history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.” For in the Portugal of the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution and the Avante Festival, History repeats itself as a Festival!

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Photos: Alexandre Santini