MADRID 15 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Celeste Caeiro, the waitress who managed to transform the carnation into a revolutionary symbol in Portugal in 1974, died this Friday at the age of 91 in the town of Leiria, as confirmed by her granddaughter, Carolina Caeiro Fontela, on her social networks. .
“Forever, my grandmother Celeste. Take care of me,” Caeiro Fontela published on his profile on the social network I would have paid tribute to him in life.
In fact, during the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution on April 25, Caeiro Fontela herself claimed her grandmother’s role as the architect of this flower being recognized as the revolutionary symbol par excellence in the country. .
“There are many people who still think that she was a florist (the one who gave a carnation to a soldier), but my grandmother was not a florist,” Caeiro’s granddaughter stated months ago in statements to the aforementioned Portuguese agency, recalling that her grandmother She worked as a waitress in Lisbon.
On April 25, 1974, the self-service where Caeiro worked was closed, but his boss had asked him to buy carnations to offer to customers and decorate the interior of the restaurant. When he was walking down the street with the bouquet of carnations, a member of the Armed Forces Movement asked him for a cigarette.
Caeiro, who had never smoked due to his lung problems, could not give him the cigarette that the soldier asked for, but he did give him a carnation. The soldier took the flower and placed it on the barrel of his rifle, a gesture that was then repeated by his companions and which ended up becoming a symbol of the Portuguese revolution.
Although Caeiro has never been honored in her lifetime, the Lisbon City Council, at the proposal of the Portuguese Communist Party, unanimously approved last May to honor the elderly woman with the award of the city medal, as well as with an “evocative intervention ” in “a public place in the capital”, which however has not yet happened.
The Carnation Revolution is the name by which the coup d’état carried out by the Armed Forces Movement – an organization formed in the Portuguese Army during the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar – on April 25 is known. of 1974 against the dictatorial State.