Hugo Gonçalves was born two years after the Carnation Revolution. Maybe that’s why he writes at close range. With beauty and urgency, without wasting a single word. A journalist and writer, he has developed a work that combines historical memory, social analysis, and extensive exploration … For individual identity. His literature is characterized by a precise style capable of uniting the intimate with the political. He’s a tough guy. At least on paper. Someone who is able to direct a tragicomedy with as much talent and respect as possible.
publisher Asteroid Books Just published in Spain is Revolución (Fernando Namora Prize and phenomenon in Portugal), a monumental novel that reconstructs the modern history of Portugal through a family, The Tempest, from the last years of the Estado Novo to the turbulent revolutionary process after April 25, 1974. The plot follows three siblings (Maria Luisa, Poriza and Frederico) whose lives embody different ways of confronting the end of dictatorship, fear, freedom and sociality. Transformation. The work mixes political secrecy, family conflicts, sexual awakening, historical trauma and the real difficulty of building a democracy after half a century of tyranny. Narrated by Hugo GonsalvesThe revolution does not manifest itself as a political event, but rather as an intimate uproar.
Every family history is political. This time, it is the women who anchor this saga in its political aspect.
I wanted to write about women, partly because my previous heroes were men, but also because the historical position of women in pre-revolutionary Portugal was very limited. She could not leave the country without the permission of her father or husband, nor could she join many professions. This context made it natural for women to be the focus of the novel.
Maria Luisa, despite her training and struggle, was relegated to the second division. Even within the revolution, do conservative structures persist?
The Communist Party was revolutionary, but conservative and militant in its work, which is understandable in an underground context. Furthermore, Portugal as a whole was very conservative. Many joined the party not because of Soviet ideology, but because it was the most effective organization against the dictatorship. Over time, the cause absorbs the individual.
Let’s talk about your character Frederico. Was the sexual revolution political like the carnation revolution?
Yes. For him, freedom is a basic need and not a political program. He asks himself “to be free for what?” “To be free,” he answers. It faces a society in transition, but still marked by decades of oppression.
It also appears in the novel that after April 25, there were areas that did not even know that there was a revolution.
It happened. There were isolated rural areas. The revolution was ideal, but building democracy was slow and difficult. Approving the constitution, forming the first government, and strengthening institutions took a long time. There was a simultaneous threat from the far right and the far left. Democracy is not limited to voting: it requires justice and equal access to education and public services that guarantee true freedom.
He talks about memory as a subjective process, conditioned by the political origin of each family. What was it like in Portugal?
The perception of the revolutionary process depends a lot on family heritage: right or left. I did not want to present a final version, but rather to present the complexities. Literature should reveal nuances, not dogmas. The same thing happens with colonialism and colonial war: there is a huge gap between what many believe happened and what actually happened. When a country does not resolve a historical conflict, that conflict resurfaces in the future.
Purity is the character most averse to revolution. And not just because she is conservative.
It is introspective and difficult to write at first, but its transformation is the most intimate and symbolic. Their personal and sexual liberation responds not to ideology, but to an internal process. It represents those who advance at a different pace, who can maintain conservative positions without ceasing to belong to the social fabric. It also reflects that Portugal remained deeply religious and that many lived through the revolution in fear.
The family acts as an accelerator of tensions in a turbulent historical moment.
The family is truly a microcosm of conflict. The film takes place in a time like the Portuguese, where everything is condensed.
For Spain, the revolution of the keys was just an expectation, a desire. How similar are they?
Portugal and Spain share a deep cultural matrix: history, Catholicism, and similar social structures. The reception of the novel in Spain bears this out: several readers have told me that this Portuguese family could very well be Spanish. The differences lie in the way they broke away from dictatorship: Portugal had a revolution; Spain, transitional phase. But the tensions, contradictions and dilemmas are very similar.
Where and for how long?
In the 1970s, both countries had very isolated and conservative regions. Religiosity, fear of change, the difficulty of building a solid democracy after decades of tyranny: these are all common. In Portugal, between 1965 and 1974, hundreds of thousands of people immigrated; Something similar happened in Spain. Both societies have undergone slow and profound transformations that have not been without resistance. The Portuguese Revolution was romantic, but complex: popular, not overly violent, but difficult to consolidate. Spain has had its own complexities in the transition period. Today, readers from both countries recognize this convergence. Families, religion, historical wounds, and political memory act almost like mirrors.