"Celeste Caeiro, known as the 'Carnation Celeste', symbolically marked the beginning of the liberating dawn with her symbolic gesture of giving a carnation to a soldier from those she carried with her. If today the April Revolution is known worldwide as the Carnation Revolution, we owe it, first and foremost, to this singular gesture by Celeste Caeiro", stated the PCP council in the Lisbon City Council, in a press release.

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April, which put an end to 48 years of dictatorship in Portugal, the PCP councilors announced that they will present a proposal "so that Celeste Caeiro is paid due tribute, with a commemorative monument and, to this end, she is also awarded a decoration with the Medal of Merit of the City of Lisbon".

According to the PCP, Celeste Caeiro is a woman of "strong convictions, humble and hard-working, a national figure and communist militant", from the city of Lisbon and who "deserves this recognition and appreciation".

About to turn 91 (on May 2nd), sick and weakened, Celeste Caeiro wants to parade on Avenida da Liberdade, in Lisbon, on Thursday, if her health allows it and someone lends her a wheelchair.

Celeste Caeiro no longer wants to talk about the revolution and now passes the word to her granddaughter, Carolina Caeiro Fontela, to "rectify gaps in history" that successive years of news have perpetuated.

"There are many people who still think that she was a florist [who gave a carnation to a soldier], but my grandmother was not a florist", the granddaughter told the Lusa agency, recalling that Celeste worked in a 'self-service' in the Franjinhas building, on Rua Braamcamp, in Lisbon, and only when she arrived at work, on April 25th, 1974, did she learn that there was a revolution.

On that day, Carolina said, the 'self-service' was celebrating its first anniversary, but it did not open because of the revolution and the boss, "who had ordered carnations to offer to customers and decorate the space, told the employees to take a bouquet each".

Celeste took her bouquet of carnations and headed to Rossio to see "what she had been waiting for so long to happen".

It was there that she asked a soldier what they were doing there and if he needed anything.

The soldier, "whose identity she never learned, signaled that he wanted a cigarette" and Celeste, who suffered from lung problems and never smoked, gave him a carnation instead, which the soldier placed on the barrel of his gun and which would end up being the symbol of the revolution.

Fifty years later, Celeste insists on parading on Avenida da Liberdade on Thursday, with a carnation on her chest. But Carolina has doubts: "I don't know if her health will allow it and, for that, we would need to find a wheelchair, which no one has yet provided us with, because in all these years no one has done anything for my grandmother", she lamented.

Added to her grandmother's enthusiasm for the revolution is her granddaughter's revolt today because "no organization has ever given her the recognition she deserves, because no one has ever wanted to know what she went through in life", lamenting the "feeling of ingratitude of a country that gives so many decorations, makes so many public acknowledgements by the Government and the Presidency", and where "no organization has been able to pay tribute to Celeste dos Cravos while she is alive".

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