Let us imagine that everything went up in smoke during the early hours of 25 April 1974. “The first day whole and pure” never came to be: fifty years later, Portugal remains silenced, shackled by the dictatorship and its secret police (PIDE), by censorship and torture, by fears of denunciation. Coca-Cola is just a myth, Crocs are banned, abortion is a crime and so is homosexuality. “If the PIDE guys get wind of that, we’ll all be arrested.” This imaginative exercise, a “dystopian fiction” by stage director Ricardo Alves and the Palmilha Dentada company, returns now to the Teatro Carlos Alberto stage for new performances. O 25 de Abril Nunca Aconteceu [The Carnation Revolution Never Happened] is a carefree tribute to the Carnation Revolution’s fiftieth anniversary that challenges us to realise how much we need freedom and democracy. “Freedom. The surest, most beautiful thing in my life.”