After a long military career in the
Portuguese Colonial Wars, Eanes was stationed in
Portuguese Angola when the
25 April revolution of 1974 took place. He joined the
Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA or Armed Forces Movement) and after returning to Portugal was made president of
RTP (Portuguese public television). In January–February 1975, he emerged as a leader in the "operationals" faction within the Portuguese military that represented the professional interests of the
officer corps. Around the same time, he was cultivated by the new
US embassy team of
Frank Carlucci, appointed in January 1975 by the
United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the advice of
Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency General
Vernon A. Walters with the mission of "getting the communists out of the government and keeping them out"; he joined
NATO training programmes following selection by Colonel Robert Schuler and
Supreme Allied Commander Europe Alexander Haig, and earned the description of "a boy scout for democracy" from Carlucci's deputy
Herbert S. Okun. Eanes then ordered the
military counter-coup of 25 November 1975 against the pro-
communist radical faction of the MFA, ending that year's "
hot summer" (
Verão quente).
Manuela Eanes with
U.S. president Ronald Reagan and
First Lady Nancy Reagan at the
White House, 1983. In
June 1976 he was elected
President of Portugal with the backing of all political parties except the
Communists, and simultaneously held the positions of the commander-in-chief of the
Portuguese Armed Forces, chief of the
Armed Forces General Staff, and head of the
Council of the Revolution. He initially entrusted the
Socialist Party with forming a
minority government. In 1977, he established an independent commission to examine Portugal's economy, and after dismissing the Socialist PM
Mário Soares in August 1978 he appointed three successive
technocratic cabinets of
Alfredo Nobre da Costa,
Carlos Mota Pinto and
Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, none of which lasted more than a year. At the end of
1980 he was re-elected, serving until March 1986. After his presidency, he headed the
Democratic Renewal Party (), and continued to support the
Social Democratic Party (PSD) minority government until 1987. He resigned in 1987 after being defeated by PSD in the
legislative election. is on the right. (USAF) He is a member of the
Portuguese Council of State, as a former elected
president of Portugal. Eanes is one of the most admired and respected figures in Portuguese public life due to his extreme humility and sense of civic duty. In the words of historian
Tom Gallagher, he "had remained a popular figure despite the country's steady drift to the right" and "won the approval of many Portuguese of different persuasions as an honest man who was quite clearly not a member of the political class of Lisbon lawyers or Coimbra University professors which (regardless of the political system in being) had long dominated the country". Eanes once refused the honorary title of
Marshal, since he considered the title unnecessary. More recently, in February 2025 he refused a 100,000 euro prize because
the Fatherland does not owe anyone anything. Years before Eanes had also refused to receive over one million euro in backpay from his military service. In July of that same year, Eanes suffered a car accident, but was unharmed. ==Honours==