"50 Years, 50 Voices, 50 Women" was published this month by Edições Esgotadas and is coordinated by Violante Saramago Matos, who in the introduction explains what it's about: it is a work that marks 50 years of a project and democratic regime, brings 50 testimonies and gives voice to 50 women.

The coordinator explains that she wanted this book "as a way to go to the memory" of a past that is not far in history, as the published testimonies reveal.

"50 voices, different in what they were, in the age they had, in how they lived, in what they felt, in what they dreamed, an expression that we know is insufficient for what we are as a society," she writes.

This was a society of people with higher education and illiterate people, people with intervention and without intervention, people who were starving and people who didn't even know what it was, people who were taken by surprise and people who knew that something was going to happen.

All this is reflected in this social mosaic built from the testimonies collected from 50 women, chosen because it was to women that the Estado Novo offered "the house to clean, the children to take care of, the husband to respect", people who truly did not exist, did not count, had no rights, and few were able to make their voices heard and express their wishes.

The variety is well represented in this book, which includes testimonies such as that of the jurist and politician Ana Gomes, who begins by saying that she has the privilege of "being able to answer the famous question of Baptista Bastos 'Where were you on April 25?' with a simple 'There'".

At 20 years old at the time, she worked in a frozen fish company, because she was prevented from entering the Faculty by government guards, and was preparing to leave for a street action before work, when she received a phone call reporting the coup d'état.

The former director of the Galleries 111 and curator of the exhibitions of the Manuel de Brito Art Center, Arlete Silva, recalls that she was 29 years old, all lived in dictatorship, when the revolution took place, having started to live in fear from the age of seven.

Carlota Ramalho, a retired teacher, evokes "a period of great concern", between mid-1973 and early 1974, when she was 25 years old, motivated by secret meetings of her husband, related to the movement of the captains.

Célia Metrass, founder of the Women's Liberation Movement, says that at just 17 years old and with a strong political consciousness she imagined that when the dictatorship ended there would be music in the bandstands of the gardens on Sundays, a "naive thought, but full of symbolism".

For this feminist, April 25, 1974 dawned with a phone call saying "it seems like this is it", after the failed attempt in Caldas da Rainha.

The actress Cucha Carvalheiro recalls the shock that took her when the phone woke her up in the middle of the night: "Did someone die?".

"On the other side, a friendly voice calms me down, 'turn on the radio'. Few words, because you never knew if the PIDE was listening. I light a cigarette with an illegal lighter -- at that time a lighter license was mandatory", says the actress.

The journalist Diana Andringa, who at the time was 26 years old and was not a journalist, says that the doorbell rang before the alarm clock and it was the neighbor from the floor below, Fernanda Tomás, her cellmate in Caxias, who at the time was already in her ninth year of prison.

Diana opened the door quickly and the neighbor announced that there must have been a coup d'état, because the radio was broadcasting military music and telling people not to leave their homes.

The former teacher and director of positions in the education area, Fernanda Amaral, makes a report focused mainly on the perspective of the wife of a Captain of April, António Luís Ferreira Amaral, whom she married in 1972.

They lived in Viseu, and on the eve of the revolution they were awakened by some of her husband's colleagues who came from Lisbon and needed their car ride to go to Lamego to deliver some documents.

These papers were the "instructions for the big day. It was the beginning of the revolution", she says, recalling that the next day (24th) she and her husband did not go to bed and sat on the sofa listening to the radio, waiting "with anxiety and anguish for the hour that was approaching".

When the first password of the small notebook broke out -- "And after the Farewell", by Paulo de Carvalho -- her husband got up, went to get the bag prepared for the days he had to stay in the barracks, where the functions to be performed had already been distributed, and left.

Seeing herself alone at home, with a baby son in the cradle, Fernanda stuck to the radio, her heart "beating fast", in "desperate hours", until "finally Zeca Afonso fills the air with 'Grândola, Vila Morena'", which meant that the revolution had begun and the plan was underway.

The doctor Isabel do Carmo remembers life in dictatorship, the foundation of the Revolutionary Brigades with Carlos Antunes, the several assaults on her house by the PIDE, the passage to clandestinity and the revolutionary period that followed April 25, in which she was a very active militant.

In turn, the journalist Helena Neves was one of the many people caught by the Revolution when they were in prison. She, her husband and others were the last to be released from prison, on April 27.

Isabel Soares, daughter of the historical socialist Mário Soares, evokes those days when she distributed water and sandwiches to the rebels, the cries of "long live freedom", the euphoria in Largo do Carmo, the emotion in the liberation of political prisoners in Caxias, but also the rush and the shots near the PIDE headquarters, on Rua António Maria Cardoso, which killed five young people.

Ana Benavente, Dulce Rocha, Edite Estrela, Ilda Figueiredo, Irene Pimentel, Lídia Jorge, Manuela Eanes and Teresa Ricou are just a few more of the several names that testify in this book, which left out Violante Saramago herself, "by choice", although she notes that at the time she was a university student and spent the night of April 24 to 25 with her husband, who was in hiding, in a house provided by a friend.

Admitting that the coordination of this book brought her a new perspective, the discovery of different experiences, a mature reflection and an increased understanding of "the most important socio-political event" in the recent history of the country, Violante Saramago highlights the importance of the collective testimony left here, "precisely this year, when palpable threats are dark clouds over these 50 years."

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