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Of growing significance was the wave of popular anti-Communist violence that continued to swell in the north. Inspired and led by the country's Catholics, the mass demonstrations reflected the fact that the church, quiescent for much of the revolutionary period, was becoming a crucial element in the complicated Portuguese political puzzle. Heretofore weakened by political differences, the Catholics now seem to have united in the face of a common enemy: the Communists.
Best Values. In Braga, an ancient, bustling religious center, thousands turned out to hear conservative Archbishop Francisco Maria da Silva denounce the Communists and demand restoration to the church of Lisbon's Catholic-owned Radio Renascenga. Organizers of the demonstration collected no fewer than 100,000 signatures in a petition calling on the Communists, who seized the station two months ago, to give it up. "We want respect for public morality and moral values!" cried the archbishop. "We want respect for fundamental human rights. Christian people must assume their responsibilities, certain that the best values guide their lives: God, his church, and the homeland."
At the end of the archbishop's speech, thousands moved to the Communist Party headquarters and tore the flag from a balcony pole and burned it in the street. Surrounded and terrified, the Communists opened fire on the crowd; 30 people were injured or wounded, some seriously. Though four armored personnel carriers and two truckloads of troops rumbled in from Oporto at midnight and dispersed the crowd with tear gas, angry demonstrators later managed to set the Communist headquarters ablaze. By morning, it was a gutted ruin.
Elsewhere in northern and central Portugal, it was much the same story. In Viseu, a factory town 80 miles southeast of Oporto, hundreds of Popular Democrats converged on the local Communist headquarters shouting support for the "Melo Antunes Document."
Nobody could say last week exactly where the Portuguese disorders would lead or who would gain power if Gonçalves did resign. One obvious candidate was Melo Antunes; as the leading moderate dissenter, he has become something of a national hero. Another possibility was Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, the unpredictable, radical, opportunistic chief of Portugal's military security force, COPCON, and a strong admirer of Fidel Castro. Apparently trying to ride the wave of anti-Gonçalves feeling, Saraiva de Carvalho backed still another dissident manifesto—a radical alternative to Melo Antunes' more moderate charter. It harked back to a program earlier promoted by radicals in the Armed Forces Movement: the creation of neighborhood councils of workers, soldiers and peasants that, in bypassing the political parties, would form the country's basic political units. There were reports that Melo Antunes was revising some sections of his dissident charter in an effort to incorporate some of the radicals' principal ideas.