The 6 November meeting of the Revolutionary Council is the flame that ignites the tinderbox the country seems set atop. Prime Minister Pinheiro de Azevedo demands action that allows him to govern under the current state of anarchy that prevails in Lisbon. One of the decisions taken that evening, then, is to silence the bombastic and provocative Rádio Renascença once and for all. At 04:30 on 7 November, under orders of the chief of staff of the Air Force, Morais da Silva, a squad of paratroopers and police sets off a bomb against the antennae of the occupied radio station, taking it off the air. The action sets off a wave of protests among the increasingly politicised and radicalised paratroopers who, since their involvement in 11 March, have veered progressively more to the left, and feel once again as though they are being tricked, used as fodder for reactionary aims. On 8 November, General Morais da Silva and Vasco Lourenço visit Tancos to try and justify the action and calm the paratrooper regiment, but the meeting is disastrous–a soldier takes the microphone and calls the general ‘bourgeois’, and there is a mass walkout to a parallel meeting. It’s an embarrassing display of insubordination that leads Vasco Lourenço to turn to his colleague and state, ‘I’m never coming anywhere with you again.’ That very day, in protest at the level of discipline in the lower ranks, 123 officers walk out of the Tancos Paratrooper School and leave it under the command of sergeants and privates. Soon after, the occupants of the school pass a motion repudiating the bombing of Renascença. On 11 November, two of those sergeants arrive at the COPCON headquarters and offer their units to Otelo, in exchange for COPCON’s support in the paratroopers’ struggle. Otelo agrees; soon after, there is a confrontation between the COPCON commander and the Air Force chief of staff, when Morais e Selva begins the process of dissolving the paratrooper units altogether.
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