'Festas Sem Abril' — 600 Lisbon Cultural Agents Petition Against EGEAC's Hollowed-Out 25 Abril Programme as Moedas Calls It a Political Attack on Holiday Eve

Lisbon enters its 52nd 25 de Abril with a row over what the city is — and is not — doing to mark it. Around 600 cultural agents have put their names to a petition under the title “Festas de Abril sem Abril” — “April Festivals Without April” — accusing the municipal company EGEAC – Lisboa Cultura, run under the political authority of Mayor Carlos Moedas (PSD), of progressively emptying the Carnation Revolution out of its own commemorations. The petition, first reported by Público and Observador, lands twenty-four hours before the city's main civic event of the year.

Who Signed

The petition is led by Ana Sofia Paiva, João Monge, Pedro Fernandes Duarte and Tiago Santos, with notable supporters including the actor André Gago, singers Cristina Branco and Carlos Mendes, and lyricist Tiago Torres da Silva. Their core charge: 25 April “appears diminished, diluted, almost absent” from the programme that EGEAC bills as the Festas de Abril. The signatories specifically lament the absence, for the second consecutive year, of the traditional concert on the night of 24 to 25 April — the all-night programming on the Avenida da Liberdade that, in better-funded years, ran from a stage at Marquês de Pombal until dawn. EGEAC has, this spring, considered renaming the festival to Festas da Primavera before retreating under pressure.

Moedas: 'A Political Attack'

Speaking at the Lisbon Municipal Assembly on 21 April, mayor Carlos Moedas described the petition as “an attempt to demonise the president of the city council” and “a political attack”. He pointed to the council's 2026 envelope: €250,000 across 30 initiatives programmed by EGEAC plus 30 further initiatives by the Câmara directly — a combined sixty events. He also invoked his own family history: “25 de Abril is fundamental to me, it is part of my life — I would not be here without 25 de Abril,” a reference to his father's persecution by the PIDE secret police under the dictatorship.

The Numbers, in Perspective

The 2026 envelope is materially smaller than the 50th-anniversary spend of almost €1 million across roughly 100 initiatives in 2024 — a year that was always exceptional. But the petitioners argue that the slope from 2024 to 2026 is steeper than the calendar alone justifies, and that what has been cut is precisely the symbolic spine of the date: large-scale programming on the night of the revolution itself. EGEAC counters that the programme is now distributed across multiple Lisbon neighbourhoods rather than concentrated on the Avenida — a deliberate choice, in its telling, to broaden access.

What Saturday Actually Looks Like

For Lisbon residents trying to plan around the dispute, Saturday's anchor events remain unchanged: the solemn session at the Assembleia da República at 10:00, with a closing speech from President António José Seguro; the opening of the Palácio de São Bento to the public from 14:30 to 18:30; and the traditional descent of Avenida da Liberdade, organised by the Associação 25 de Abril, gathering at Marquês de Pombal from around 15:30. Whatever EGEAC has on offer in Festas de Abril, the descida is run by civic associations and trade unions, not by the city hall.

The petition is now expected to reach the desk of the Comissão de Cultura at the Assembleia Municipal in May, with the centre-left opposition — PS, Bloco de Esquerda and Livre — already signalling support for a debate. The political question, going into a council year that ends with autumn local elections, is whether Festas de Abril sem Abril sticks as a slogan beyond Saturday.