PORTUGAL: The Fall of a Hero-General

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Portugal's fragile revolutionary government was still intact last week following ten days of political tensions that threatened to bring the country to the brink of civil war. Nonetheless, it had lost its first hero and a good deal of its innocence. General António de Spínola, 64, the hero-general of the Portuguese revolution, split with the young leftist officers who engineered the April coup and resigned as provisional President. In an emotional farewell address on television, Spínola criticized many of the government's policies and warned that they would result in economic chaos, anarchy and "new forms of slavery." He was immediately replaced by General Francisco da Costa Gomes, 60, an old friend and the second-ranking member of the ruling junta.

Spínola's resignation was the climax of a long-simmering struggle between the young officers of the Armed Forces Movement, the rebel group that toppled the Caetano regime, and the conservative general they had chosen as the figurehead leader of their revolution. Tension grew after Spínola made a bid last July for immediate elections, which he would almost certainly have won, thereby acquiring vastly enlarged powers. The officers rebuffed him, fearing that he was attempting to take over the revolution for himself. Lately, Spínola had begun making appeals to the "silent majority" to "awaken and defend itself actively against extremist totalitarianism." The appeal appeared to be a veiled warning against Portugal's well-organized Communist Party.

Someone obviously got the message. Three weeks ago, well-financed political organizers, billing themselves as members of the "silent majority," began drawing up plans for a huge pro-Spínola rally in front of the presidential palace in Lisbon. Huge posters showing a man saying "Maioria Silenciosa" (Silent Majority) began appearing on Lisbon walls. Buses were hired and free train tickets were given away to bring people into Lisbon from the countryside. Leftists soon launched a poster counteroffensive, tearing down the silent-majority signs or embellishing them with fangs and swastikas.

As the threat of violence between leftists and right-wingers mounted, friendly Western diplomats, as well as members of the government, warned Spínola that the rally was a cover for a countercoup led by extreme right-wing forces loyal to the old regime. The plot, according to the government, called for the assassination of both Spínola and Premier Vasco dos Santos Gonçalves. The purported aim was to create chaos if not civil war, thus enabling the extreme right wing to seize power.

Too Gloomy. Not until the day of the demonstration did Spínola finally call it off. By then, military units and leftist vigilantes had put up roadblocks around the city, searching cars for arms. Some 250 people, many of them prominent figures in the old regime, were arrested. When leftists on the ruling junta ordered Spínola to oust three conservative generals who were believed to be sympathetic to the rightist scheme, he balked—and then resigned.