Flowers that spell freedom
Anzac Day is Freedom Day in Portugal. The similarities in our sacrifices run deep, writes Francisco Guerra.
Anzac Day in New Zealand is Freedom Day in Portugal, Dia da Liberdade. At first glance, it is merely a coincidence, but the similarities in our sacrifices, and the values our nations hold dear, run deep.
April 25 has always been a special date to celebrate freedom, liberty, and remember the sacrifices made to ensure those values.
And this was before I found out Anzac Day even existed.
Freedom Day is when we celebrate the popular uprising that ended Portugal’s fascist dictatorship in 1974 and gave us democracy after 46 years of authoritarian rule. It is perhaps our most important public holiday, a day when the whole nation celebrates democracy and the sacrifices that come with defending it.
Imagine my surprise when I moved to New Zealand almost a decade ago to find not only did Kiwis also have a major national holiday on April 25, but one focused on the same core values of celebrating freedom and remembering those who protected it.
Being a foreigner, it is not my place to reminisce on Anzac Day itself, or write of its significance. I fear it would be insulting. The day is as special for Kiwis as Freedom Day is for us Portuguese, and that will suffice.
However, I cannot help but find a special and deeply personal meaning behind the coincidences surrounding the two events.
For starters, beyond sharing the same date, they also both revolve around the military. Anzac Day was firmly anchored on the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of 1915, even if its meaning has since been expanded to incorporate other conflicts and become a wider ceremony of remembrance.
Freedom Day started with a Portuguese military frustrated and exhausted after years of fighting anti-colonial guerrillas in Africa, with a rebel movement of officers overthrowing the fascist New State and ending the bloody wars.
Even the number of casualties was roughly the same. About 8000 New Zealanders died in the Gallipoli campaign, roughly the same number of Portuguese soldiers killed in Africa.
And then there are the red flowers. For New Zealand, the unmistakable icon of Anzac Day is the red poppy, that global symbol of battlefield casualties since the Great War. For Portugal, Freedom Day is marked by the red carnation, after the flowers worn in the lapels of soldiers leading the revolution in the streets of the capital.
And finally there is the personal touch. Many New Zealanders have a family connection to Anzac Day of some sort, with the memory of war firmly ingrained, and thousands of personal accounts living on to this day via the men and women who suffered through it.
I have a personal connection with Freedom Day that bears much the same weight and meaning. My grandfather was a journalist and, secretly, an anti-fascist activist and playwright during the New State. He wasn’t shot at on the beaches of Gallipoli, but he was arrested and interrogated by PIDE, Portugal’s feared state police at the time.
I have come a long way from Portugal. Almost 20,000 kilometres separate the two countries. But I find a special meaning in the uncanny relationship between my natural home and my adopted home as we share that special day.
It is a beautiful date, commemorated in red and made only the more special now, a bridge of liberty and sacrifice that links one end of the world to the other. It is a link to the past that transcends any physical distance.
Some of my friends in New Zealand go so far as to call it fate, proof that I was destined to live in beautiful Aotearoa. It’s hard to argue otherwise.
Anzac Day and Freedom Day. Their values are shared, precious and eternal. And truly universal.