PIDE/DGS Fires on Protesters

You are standing where Portugal's dictatorship fired its last shots. On this street, Rua António Maria Cardoso, the secret police known as PIDE/DGS opened fire from their headquarters windows on April 25, 1974, killing four young men who came to celebrate freedom.

Fernando C. Gesteira, just 18 years old, died here alongside José J. Barneto, Fernando Barreiros dos Reis, and José Guilherme R. Arruda. They were part of a crowd of over 600 people who gathered that rainy evening, demanding justice at the building where Portugal's secret police had tortured and killed political prisoners for decades. PIDE was the brutal enforcer of the Estado Novo dictatorship, renamed DGS in 1969 but never changing its methods.

When military officers overthrew the regime that morning, people flooded these streets despite warnings to stay indoors. By nightfall, they reached this headquarters. Desperate agents fired from the first floor windows, wounding 45 and killing these four. The shooting sparked an armed standoff lasting until the next day. Among the chaos, a DGS agent trying to escape was also killed on this same street. The building that once held political prisoners now houses luxury apartments, but a plaque on the wall remembers the four civilians who became the Carnation Revolution's only recorded victims.