The February 1927 Revolt, sometimes also referred to as the February 1927 Revolution, was a military rebellion in Portugal that took place between February 3 and 9, 1927, centered in Porto, the city where the insurgents' command center was installed and fought the main challenges. The revolt, led by Adalberto Gastão de Sousa Dias, ended with the surrender and arrest of the rebels and resulted in about 80 deaths and 360 injuries in Porto and more than 70 deaths and 400 injuries in Lisbon. It was the first consequent attempt to overthrow the Military Dictatorship that was then consolidated in Portugal following the 28 May 1926 coup d'état, which occurred nine months earlier, initiating a set of insurrectionary movements that became known as the Reviralhism.
Background The victory of the 28 May 1926 coup d'état, nine months earlier, led to the establishment of the Military Dictatorship, with the 1911 Constitution of the First Portuguese Republic suspended, the parliament closed and civil liberties abolished. Although clearly anti-democratic, the regime that was then being drafted was in line with the anti-parliamentary movement that was growing in Europe and was accepted by a population tired of the instability and violence that had marked the last decade in Portugal. With governments that rarely exceeded a few months in force and a political life marked by successive coups, counter-coups and military pronouncements, strikes and attacks, the First Portuguese Republic collapsed as a viable political regime.
Despite the 28 May 1926 coup, the supporters of which later glorified as the "National Revolution", garnered the approval of many of the moderate Republicans and Democrats. The Republican left, although weakened by the arrests and deportations decreed by the government of Manuel Gomes da Costa in the months immediately following the coup, remained active and mobilized, particularly among the military and members of the security forces, routinely routed through dozens of coups and counter-coups over the past decade. For those military men, the 28 May 1926 coup was just another insurrection, just as transitory as the previous ones, liable to be reversed by yet another revolutionary movement.
In this context, in the Portuguese Army, in the Navy, in the Republican National Guard and in the rest of the security forces, there were many officers who were ready to restore republican and democratic ideals, and civil liberties along with them. The members of the military and militarized forces were joined by militants from workers' organizations, in particular the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), and from republican parties and institutions that remained in operation and continued to edit their press, despite increasing censorship and police restrictions.
After a decade of constant uprisings, and particularly after the revolutionary paroxysm of the years 1924 and 1925, all political quarters expected new revolutionary events and the imminence of the rebellion was public and notorious, and it was expected to emerge from the North, with its center in Porto. In order to protect the situation and guarantee loyalty, Óscar Carmona, then the most prestigious military leader and President of the Republic, visited the city of Porto and the region's military units in late January. Around that same time, several ministers met in the barracks of the Artillery Regiment 3, in Lisbon, counting shotguns and ordering alerts and prevention throughout the country.
Thus, the February 1927 Revolt began as another routine military rebellion, following the dozens that had marked the final years of the First Portuguese Republic, not even having the element of surprise, since it was expected by the Government and the forces who opposed it. Nor was it the first attempt against the new regime, as in Chaves, as early as 11 September 1926, there had been a rebellion of the infantry forces stationed there, in an inconsequential movement and without repercussions in the country, seen by some as a mere manifestation of insurrectionary itching among the military, but that still served as a reminder that rebellion had not died.
Despite its predictability and framing in the process prior to the 28 May 1926 coup, the February 1927 movement had a well-defined objective: halt the consolidation of the military dictatorship that emerged from the May 28, 1926 Coup.
The February 1927 Revolt, without success, was nevertheless a turning point, marking the beginning of Reviralhismo. Despite its cost in lives, history later proved it to be the first and only rebellion to pose a real threat to the dictatorship and the consolidation of the subsequent Estado Novo.
The rebellion The planning The revolt was organized by a committee of northern Democrats, mostly from Porto, among whom were included prestigious military and Democrats, such as Adalberto Gastão de Sousa Dias, while in prison and on leave at the Military Hospital of Porto, Jaime de Morais, Sarmento Pimentel and João Pereira de Carvalho, and leading figures from the Republican movement, such as Jaime Cortesão, who had been medical captain of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps, and José Domingues dos Santos.
It is known that on 25 June 1926, less than a month after the 28 May coup, a revolt against the military dictatorship was already being prepared, in a process led by the so-called National Library Group, which included among others Raul Proença, Jaime Cortesão and David Ferreira, the first with strong connections to Seara Nova. Although linked to this group, the organization of the February 1927 Revolt resulted from the maturation of a set of anti-dictatorial initiatives that were coalescing around the figure of Sousa Dias, a figure that had stood out in the reaction to the 28 May coup of the previous year.
Since Sousa Dias was under arrest at the Military Hospital of Porto, and there was an important nucleus of Republicans and Democrats in that city, which was joined by a democratic tradition within the military units stationed there, it was decided to establish the city of Porto as the starting point of the rebellion, in the expectation of a quick adhesion of the units of Lisbon and of the rest of the country. To serve as a liaison with the revolutionaries in Lisbon, Raul Proença left for Porto on 21 January 1927, participating in the planning of operations and in unleashing the revolt.
After the military uprising in Porto, the revolt was to spread to Lisbon, where adherent military units, supported by civilians mobilized by workers' and democratic organizations, were to prevent the sending of reinforcements to government forces in northern Portugal and immobilize the Government for long enough to allow the consolidation of the new political situation in Porto and the expansion of the movement to the garrisons of other regions.
The revolt was scheduled to take place during the celebrations of 31 January, but the delays and hesitations among the conspirators ended up delaying it to 3 February.
The revolt in Porto The rebellion started at 4:30 am on 3 February, with the departure of the 9th Hunters Regiment, which was joined by most of the 6th Cavalry Regiment, coming from Penafiel, several nuclei of other regiments of the city and a company from the National Republican Guard stationed in Bela Vista, Porto.
The command of the forces had been entrusted to Adalberto Gastão de Sousa Dias, with Fernando Freiria as chief of staff, supported by a revolutionary committee made up of Jaime Cortesão, Raul Proença, Jaime Alberto de Castro Morais, João Maria Ferreira Sarmento Pimentel and João Pereira de Carvalho. Among the supporters also included José Domingues dos Santos, the leader of the democratic left who in 1918 had directed the civil conspiracy against the Monarchy of the North.
Jaime Cortesão was immediately appointed civil governor of Porto and Raul Proença, in addition to being a conspirator, was an organizer and combatant with weapons in hand, serving as a liaison with the co-conspirators of Lisbon.
During the dawn and morning of 3 February, the forces of the rebels went to the area of Batalha Square, where the headquarters of the Military Region and of the Civil Government and the most important telegraph station were located. In that first action, General José Ernesto de Sampaio and Colonel João de Morais Zamith, respectively first and second commanders of the Military Region, Lieutenant Colonel Luís Monteiro Nunes da Ponte, Porto's civil governor, and his replacement, Major Sequeira Tavares, the commander of the force that guarded the headquarters and the president of the Press Censorship Commission, were imprisoned.
Government forces, after a few hours of disorganization, were made up of a small part of the 18th Infantry Regiment, which had Colonel Raul Peres as commander, the 9th Cavalry Regiment and the 5th Artillery Regiment, which were quartered in the Serra do Pilar. On the afternoon of 3 February, under the command of Colonel João Carlos Craveiro Lopes, chief of staff of the Military Region and military governor of the city, the pro-government forces concentrated on the Serra do Pilar barracks and opened fire from artillery against the rebels.
On the morning of the same day, in a risky maneuver, but indicative of the certainty that loyalty to the Government of the troops of Lisbon was assured, the Minister of War, Colonel Abílio Augusto Valdez de Passos e Sousa, left Lisbon in a train with destination to Vila Nova de Gaia, where it arrived at dusk. He then assumed the operational control of the pro-government forces installed there under the command of Colonel João Carlos Craveiro Lopes, remaining at the front until the subjugation of the rebels.
Early on the morning of 4 February, the soldiers of the Amarante Artillery Regiment joined the rebels, whose artillery pieces forced government forces to retreat to Monte da Virgem, from where the bombing of the rebels continued. That same morning, the rebel forces were concentrated in the city area around Praça da Batalha, around which trenches, machine guns and artillery pieces were set up. At the confluence of Praça da Batalha and Rua de Entreparedes, two artillery pieces were installed.
On the morning of 4 February, the 8th Cavalry Regiment, coming from Aveiro, faithful to the Government, managed to penetrate the fire of the revolutionaries and cross the Dom Luís I Bridge, but was stopped by the barricades that defended Praça da Batalha. The fate of the faithful troops to the Government were stationed in the city of Porto itself, which was rejected by the intense fire in the trenches of the revolutionaries when they tried to advance on the positions of the rebels.
Meanwhile, messages of adhesion from various garrisons began to arrive, but not from the expected garrisons in Lisbon. Troops belonging to units stationed in Viana do Castelo, Figueira da Foz and Faro joined, the latter supported by forces from Olhão, Tavira and Vila Real de Santo António, but due to lack of support, particularly from Lisbon, the encounters in these cities were sporadic and the rebellion was, for the most part, subdued within a few hours.
On the afternoon of February 4, when military adhesions did not live up to expectations, Raul Proença, deeply involved in the revolt, summoned civilians to fight alongside the rebels, but with little success. The movement would remain essentially military until the end, with few civilian adherences. Even the remaining forces of the National Republican Guard stationed in and around Porto made it known, through their commander, Major Alves Viana, that they would remain neutral, guaranteeing the policing of the city "in defense of the lives and assets of the citizens", but not interfering in the feud between the military.