Page - 88 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

88 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) de Almeida, Müller, Wimplinger | Die Linke schaut nach Portugal — Extended Abstract and socialist models of society made them particularly attractive to the post-1968 generation (Gilcher-Holtey 2008: 202). In the case of Portugal and its revolution, the spectrum of political affiliations of the international visitors directly reflected the plurality of local active political forces. At the same time, a paradigm shift in tourism took place during the 1960s and 1970s, which also made Portugal, in the midst of an upheaval, attractive as a destination, especially for left-wing travelers. In addition, from a Western European perspective, these trips were joined by a new generation that, in 1968, was still too young to be politically engaged. In turn, those travelers who translated their experience into images, whether textual or visual, and brought them back for public disclosure at home, differentiate themselves from the type of “revolutionary tourist” who “prints” his/her “impressions” according to a pre-existing and imported theoretical view (Frey 1976: 8). With regard to the question, asked in this issue, of the interplay of image, text and travel, it is of interest that the “change of location […] is always connected with theory and the theoroi, so much so that θεωρία [teoria] is almost synonymous with what a journey can be” (Koller 1958: 278). In this travel modus, an unadulterated network of perceptions, including impressions that are contradicting or conceptually not yet compre- hensible, is transported back home, where it flows into local theoretical discussions. Writers who have traveled to Portugal—some in solidarity campaigns—include Hans Magnus Enzens- berger, Alfred Andersch, Heinrich Böll, Günter Wallraff, Helga Nowak, Thomas Bernhard, Hubert Fichte, Peter Weiss, Horst Karasek and the Marxist economist Ernest Mandel. When Günter Wallraff and Franz Xaver Kroetz attended the inauguration of the agricultural coop- erative União faz a Força (Unity Makes Strong), they did so under a solidarity campaign that clearly served the purpose of West German national representation (Meyer-Clason 1997: 316f). Heinrich Böll, on the other hand, was strictly unwilling to appear at official events and declared that his travels were solely motivated by his own interest (Meyer-Clason 1997: 303). Thomas Ber- nhard went on vacation. Newspapers such as Kursbuch, Das Neue Forvm, Merkur and links dealt with the Portuguese events over a longer period of time, and each had reporting observers on-site. Through a closer look at the coverage of the Portuguese Revolution in links, it appears that it was the change of location that made reporting that showed “what [was] really going on in Portugal” (Maier 1974: 4) possible. Interestingly, rather than including self-produced images, these reports featured already circulating ones, the origin of which was not further identified in the newspaper. Whereas in their research on travel images Alù and Hill assume a reality-dis- torting authenticity effect that the image exerts on the travel report (2018: 1), the newspaper’s use of images in links points in a different direction. It uses the change of location as a rhetorical instrument: the articles gain authenticity simply by emphasizing personal experiences on-site. The Carnation Revolution also found its way into a large number of political documentary films. Of these we have chosen to take a closer look at the films Torre Bela (FR/IT/PT/CH 1977, Dir.: Thomas Harlan) and Viva Portugal! (BRD/FR/PT 1976, Dir.: Christiane Gerhards, Serge July, Malte Rauch, Samuel Schirmbeck). Rather than taking a merely observational atti- tude, these two films are interested in the active production of situations in which a theoretical problem becomes apparent. They produce reality, although in different ways, lending them- selves to a comparison built on the study of their militant strategies, ranging from didactic agendas to manipulation. Focused on narratives on the Portuguese Agrarian Reform, the end of the Colonial War and the interference of Western governments for and against the revolution,