On April 25, 1976, exactly two years after a military coup that put an end to decades
of authoritarianism, the current Portuguese Constitution entered into force.
Although it was the sixth such document adopted in the country in the modern
era, it was really the first to have been adopted by a democratically elected parliament.
In the final vote that took place on April z, ten months after the inauguration
of the constituent assembly and almost one year after its election by popular vote,
only 16 of the 25o members voted against the text, all of them belonging to the
CDS (Centro Democrático e Cocial), the party furthest to the ideological right in
the assembly.
