The author of this book, fifty years after the 25th of April and using unpublished testimonies from those directly involved in the process, analyses the beginning of the Revolution that took down the dictatorship. 

Even today, some people are unaware of how a book that gave rise to the event that changed the country in 1974 and that the most prestigious Portuguese general, of that period, only needed one catchphrase to overthrow the regime: "A purely military victory is unfeasible." This statement by General António de Spínola in his book Portugal e o Futuro (Portugal and the Future), about the war in Overseas Portugal, completely destroyed the credibility of Marcello Caetano's government and caused a real earthquake in the country.

The book, launched on the 22nd of February 1974, presented a devastating reflection on the national situation and the future of the colonies by those who knew them best and had an unprecedented social and political impact on Portuguese society. In just a few days, the two hundred and thirty thousand Portuguese who bought the book realised that the Estado Novo had no solutions to the serious crisis Portugal was going through and that the regime was hanging by a thread.

Spreading across the country like wildfire, the general's proposals in Portugal paved the way that would be charted by the captains two months later, in the coup that finally brought down the regime and which the Portuguese people, who flocked to the streets, turned into a revolution. The captains granted him the honour of receiving power from Salazar's successor and appointed him president of the Junta de Salvação Nacional. However, at the first opportunity, the general was discarded, and Spínola was unable to escape the curse that was destined to befall him for having jumped the gun by two months by making the first 25 April happen with plain words.