Rui de Mascarenhas was performing at the Mermaid, a nightclub in the Hotel Lisboa in Macau, when the Carnation Revolution overthrew the dictatorship more than ten thousand kilometers away. And it was through this "regime singer", born in Mozambique, that the news reached the territory's center of power, Macau history researcher João Guedes tells Lusa.

Mascarenhas gave the news to the then director of the Macau Broadcasting Station (now Rádio Macau) Alberto Alecrim, who transmitted it to Governor José Nobre de Carvalho. It was only later that the news of freedom reached everyone, through a newscast by the British radio station BBC, "rebroadcast by Hong Kong radio stations".

This is the "current story" of how April 1974 reached Macau. But how was the news communicated to Mascarenhas?

"I only see one hypothesis, which is the following: no one had telephones to call Lisbon, except the troops. Did he go to the post office to call someone?", he suggests.

Nobre de Carvalho left his post that same year, but not immediately after April, "unlike the other governors of the colonies", probably due to his "non-extremist" character and for not having been "an outspoken defender of Salazar", the researcher analyzes.

But this fact is also a reflection of the rare transformations produced immediately by the revolution in Macau. Nothing changed the next day, "nor in the many days that followed", declares João Guedes, also because "Portugal was so far away, and the problems that worried Macau and that gave rise to the April Revolution were not felt in any way" in the city.

"Zero joy, because nobody knew what they wanted, what democracy was and those things. The slogans of that time [of the New State] were almost unknown here and, therefore, this was China, it had nothing to do with Salazarist propaganda", says Guedes, stressing that some researchers unanimously say that Macau was always "a very special colony, because it always had a Portuguese government of Macau and a Chinese shadow government of Macau".

A sign that the tentacles of the dictatorship did not always extend to the territory were the barriers created for the Portuguese political police. João Guedes says that Macau was the only overseas territory where there was no PIDE.

But years before that April, there was an attempt to open a delegation in Macau.

"It made no sense that there should be in all other places and not in Macau, so [Portugal] sent two or three PIDE agents here. When they arrived in Hong Kong, they were received at the [old] Kai Tak airport by police officers (...) who told them 'you are not welcome in Macau and you must re-embark for Portugal, because China will not let you enter Macau'", he says.

Later, with the new governor José Garcia Leandro, also a military man, signs of greater openness were felt in the region, although Guedes emphasizes that "no democracy was gained", only "political suffocation was somewhat eased".

Two years later, in 1976, the creation of the Macau Organic Statute gave more powers to the governor and led to the remodeling of the Legislative Assembly, with more members, but the number of those elected by direct suffrage remaining a minority.

Some of these episodes are addressed by João Guedes in the documentary "April 25: The Revolution from Macau", shown on Tuesday at the Consulate-General of Portugal in Macau.

Read Also: April 25. The "disaster" of March 16 and Melo Antunes' anger (Portuguese version)