On 25 April 1974, a group of Portuguese soldiers overthrew one of the last Western European dictatorships of the 20th century, and presented a political programme to the country based on three pillars: Democratise, Decolonise and Develop. What came to be known as the Carnation Revolution started the "third wave of democratisation" (Samuel P. Huntington), which then reached Spain, Greece and dozens of other countries in Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, Africa and Eastern Europe.
