For the Portuguese and their former colonies, this was a very difficult period, but many felt that the short-term effects of the Carnation Revolution were well worth the trouble when civil rights and political freedoms were achieved. The Portuguese celebrate Freedom Day on 25 April every year, and the day is a national holiday in Portugal. By refusing to grant independence to its overseas territories in Africa, the Portuguese ruling regime of Estado Novo was criticized by most of the international community, and its leaders Salazar and Caetano were accused of being blind to the "Winds of Change". After the Carnation revolution in 1974 and the fall of the incumbent Portuguese authoritarian regime, almost all the Portugal-ruled territories outside Europe became independent. For the regime, the retention of those overseas possessions had been a matter of national interest. Many previously successful Portuguese exporters (i.e. CUF and others) didn't survive the far-left politics, labour movement-inspired PREC (1975) and its influence over the Portuguese economy, society and government policies, including the newly written Portuguese Constitution adopted in 1976. In the following decades, Portugal remained a net beneficiary of European Union Structural and Cohesion Funds and didn't avoid three IMF-led bailouts between the late 1970s and the early 2010s."Portugal: Fast Facts". "IMF.org". 3 April 2020. In 2011, during the Portuguese financial crisis when the country was nearing the end of the center-left government of José Socrates and had to request international financial assistance, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, the Portuguese military officer who was the chief strategist of the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Lisbon, stated that he wouldn't have started the revolution if he had known what the country would become after it. «Se soubesse como o País ia ficar, não fazia a revolução», Diário de Notícias (13 April 2011) He also stated that the country would need a man as honest as Salazar to deal with the crisis, but from a non-fascist perspective. "Otelo: precisamos de um homem honesto como Salazar", in Diário de Notícias (21 April 2011)
