The military operation of the captains goes through decisive and dramatic moments, such as the taking of the PIDE headquarters and the surrender of Marcello Caetano, recalled by the one who commanded the coup.

The five dead of the coup

On the morning of the coup, the military loyal to the Caetano regime failed to get the soldiers to fire a single shot against the rebellious forces that had been occupying Terreiro do Paço in Lisbon since early morning, led by Salgueiro Maia. It was considered the decisive moment of the coup.

The only deaths on April 25th happened on Rua António Maria Cardoso in Lisbon. The shots were fired from the windows of the headquarters by PIDE agents, who hit those who were outside. They were civilians, not military. At the former PIDE headquarters, there is a plaque with the four names: João Arruda, a Philosophy student, Fernando Giesteira, a waiter, José Harteley Barneto, a clerk, and Fernando Reis, a soldier. The fifth death was of a PIDE clerk, António Laje.

Salgueiro Maia: "And who pays the bill for the windows?"

Shots were also heard at the Carmo Barracks, at the facade of the building where Marcello Caetano took refuge. Lieutenant Santos Silva, from the Santarém Cavalry Practical School, fired at the order of Salgueiro Maia.

"What I did here, on the radio, was to annoy Salgueiro Maia to shoot, to break the windows. And Salgueiro Maia would tell me: 'And who pays the bill for the windows?' That doesn't matter, someone has to pay, man! Shoot! Fire a burst! Break the windows of some windows on the first floor! Because that will scare people," Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho asked a "reluctant" Salgueiro Maia, who postponed the shots on the barracks windows.

When he heard the windows breaking on the radio, Otelo said: "There, it's done!"

The "family conversation" that helped to overthrow Marcello

"Today we know that this action, of breaking the windows, was decisive for Marcello's surrender. [...] We didn't know it here, but the family of the commanding general [of the GNR] Adriano Pires lived on the first floor. His wife and children were also inside. And when the windows break, the wife and children start screaming," reported the commander of the Pontinha PC.

And it was Adriano Pires' wife who precipitated the surrender and the fall of the regime. After the MFA burst on the facade of the barracks, she forced her husband to go to the room where Marcello Caetano was and demand that he surrender.

"He goes to Marcello and tells him: 'Be patient, but this is all lost, it's best to surrender right now'," he reported.

Otelo, however, was left with a regret: "I'm just sorry that it wasn't Salgueiro Maia, at that time, who obtained Marcello Caetano's surrender. That it wasn't the MFA. It ended up being Spínola, who called here."

And the PIDE? Was it or was it not complicit?

"Did they know or didn't they know? I'm convinced they knew," said Sanches Osório, regarding the knowledge that the regime's political police would have about the preparations for the revolution. First of all, because a plenary session of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), with 196 military personnel on the first floor in Cascais, with all the windows open so that they could breathe, is something that "is noticeable".

The meeting, on March 5, 1974, was supposed to have been held in a parish hall, but because it was not possible to arrange it, it was transferred, "in desperation", to a studio, provided by the brother of chaplain Manuel Arreios. The meeting produced the guiding document for the ideology underlying the military coup, the MFA program, read at the plenary session by Melo Antunes, the movement's ideologue.

The meeting took place and "nothing happened".

"And I'm convinced that nothing happened because there were certainly contacts. Now they tell me about a friend of General Spínola," said Sanches Osório, implying that there would be contacts to block information about the movement of captains from reaching the heads of the regime's political police.

"Ó Amadeu, do you know anything?"

Garcia dos Santos knew Barbieri Cardoso, PIDE deputy director, n.º 2 of director Silva Pais, personally. Months before April 25th, he was invited to a dinner at the home of the high-ranking official of the political police, on the occasion of the daughter of the man of the regime's birthday.

"He calls me aside and says to me: 'Ó Amadeu, they say there are some movements of captains who are out there doing some things, do you know anything about it?'", Barbieri Cardoso asked Garcia dos Santos, who pretended not to understand: "No, I don't know anything, nor have I ever heard anything about it."

"At that time, some three or four months before, the PIDE already knew what was going on in the movement of the captains. There were informants who were certainly among our people," he said.

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