The junior officers formed the backbone of the military revolt against Caetano and the eventual overthrow of the Estado Novo regime.

[6] The regime evolved into a classic fascist dictatorship heavily influenced by the corporatist ideas of Benito Mussolini in Italy.

While the two countries on the Iberian peninsula experienced economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s – largely as a source of low cost labour and tourist destinations – poverty and illiteracy remained high.

A combination of this and the country's poverty levels as well as a lack of social and economic development gave impetus to calls for nationalisation.

[7] Only in the 1980s did the centre-right, with pro-market sensibility and entrepreneurial vision, gain power in Portugal and started the privatization or reprivatization of Soviet-style state concerns while maintaining democracy.

[8][9][10] Two indirect consequences of the Carnation Revolution were a collapse of the economy and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people who returned from the colonies to Portugal as refugees.

These groups carried out a number of attacks and bombings during the Hot Summer of 1975, mostly in the north of Portugal, while the MDLP was involved in the attempted coup of 11 March.

[19] Shortly after the Carnation Revolution, the change of direction from a purely pro-democracy coup to a communist-inspired one, became known as the Processo Revolucionário em Curso (PREC).

Abandoning its moderate-reformist posture, the revolutionaries of the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA) leadership set out on a course of sweeping nationalizations and land expropriations.

[20] During the balance of that year, the government nationalized all Portuguese-owned capital in the banking, insurance, petrochemical, fertilizer, tobacco, cement, and wood pulp sectors of the economy, as well as the Portuguese iron and steel company, major breweries, large shipping lines, most public transport, two of the three principal shipyards, core companies of the Companhia União Fabril (CUF) conglomerate, radio and TV networks (except that of the Roman Catholic Church), and important companies in the glass, mining, fishing, and agricultural sectors.

Because of the key role of the domestic banks as holders of stock, the government indirectly acquired equity positions in hundreds of other firms.

[5] In the longer term, after the reversal of the PREC, the Carnation Revolution led to democracy and Portugal's 1986 entrance into the European Economic Community.

[21] In the agricultural sector, the collective farms set up in Alentejo after the 1974–75 expropriations due to the leftist military coup of 25 April 1974, proved incapable of modernizing, and their efficiency declined.

Throughout the colonial war period Portugal had to deal with increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions imposed by most of the international community.

In April 1974, a bloodless left-wing military coup in Lisbon, known as the Carnation Revolution, would lead the way for a modern democracy as well as the independence of the last colonies in Africa, after two years of a transitional period known as PREC, characterized by social turmoil and power disputes between left- and right-wing political forces.