At 86 years old, Celeste Martins Caeiro still remembers the day she received from her boss some bunches of flowers that, due to the Revolution, would no longer be distributed to customers at the Franjinhas Restaurant, which would be closed that day.
Celeste Martins Caeiro, the youngest of three siblings with a Galician mother, was 40 years old and was a waitress at Franjinhas, on Rua Braancamp in Marquês de Pombal, which was celebrating its first anniversary in operation, an innovative place for its time with self-service.
The Lisbon native never arrived at work. Her boss told her about a revolution and sent all the employees home. Before that, he said anyone who wanted could take the bunches of flowers they'd bought at the Ribeira market as a treat for the day's customers. They were carnations.
As she was returning home, she came across a group of soldiers on top of a tank on Rua do Carmo, and in an act of pity, "I took a carnation and gave it to him; it was the only thing I had. It was red, but there were also white ones. He accepted it; he might not have accepted it. He put it in the barrel of his rifle, and I thought it was beautiful. Then I took another and gave it to another soldier, who also put it in the barrel, and I gave it to everyone," she recalled.
Upon seeing some soldiers already with their weapons "decorated" with carnations, the usual flower sellers of Rossio tried to multiply Celeste's gesture, giving strength to the movement that did not spill blood in its operation (the 4 civilian deaths of the revolution were hit by bullets from the DGS).
Nicknamed Celeste of the Carnations, with that innocent and beautiful gesture she ended up giving her name to the revolution that ended the dictatorship in Portugal. Celeste now lives on a street parallel to Avenida da Liberdade, the greatest achievement of the revolution she named after.
