The exhibition “Freedom and civic coherence – the example of Ernesto Melo Antunes – in contemporary Portuguese history” opens on Saturday, March 29, at 18 pm, at Quartel da Atalaia, in Tavira, as part of the celebrations for the 00th anniversary of the 40th Of april.
The exhibition, organized in close collaboration between the Municipality of Tavira, the Infantry Regiment No. 1, the Associação 25 de Abril and the Melo Antunes family, represented by his brother Fernando Melo Antunes, will be open until the 31st of August and can be visited every day until the end of June, from 10:00 am to 18:00 pm and, in July and August, from 10:00 am to 22:00 pm.
Ernesto Melo Antunes was one of the central figures of the Capitães Movement that on April 25, 1974 overthrew the dictatorship and returned freedom and democracy to the Portuguese people.
Born in Lisbon in 1933, Colonel Melo Antunes lived for seven years in Tavira, a city he loved and visited regularly, and where he would meet friends, before joining the Escola do Army.
He followed a military career like his father, served three commissions of service in Africa, but always linked to the opposition to the regime.
Due to his intellectual capacity and political training, he assumed a central and doctrinal role in the 1974 April Revolution, coordinating the writing of the famous manifesto “The Movement, the Armed Forces and the Nation” and the political program of the “3D”: democratize, decolonize and develop.
He was a member of the MFA Coordinator, Counselor of the Revolution, President of the Constitutional Commission, State Counselor, Minister without portfolio of the II and III Provisional Governments, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the IV Provisional Government and sub-director General of UNESCO (1986-88) .
In 1991, he retired, passing away on August 10, 1999.
At a time when Portugal is going through difficult times, with the values of economic and social democracy, sovereignty and national identity in danger, this tribute of gratitude to the Captains of April in the person of one of its most outstanding protagonists, Colonel Ernesto, is justified. Melo Antunes.
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