For Paris Correspondent George Taber, it was a routine background lunch. Assigned to keep a running watch on events in Portugal, Taber talked politics in a Right Bank bistro with Mario Soares, an obscure exile who was teaching Portuguese and history at a French university. Since that meeting a year and a half ago, Soares has returned home to lead Portugal's powerful Socialist Party, and Taber has visited Lisbon several times to report on "the Revolution of the Flowers" (named for the red carnations that symbolized the Armed Forces Movement).

For this week's cover story on Portugal's rapidly changing scene, Taber toured the countryside, where the Communist Party's grasp for power has stirred a violent reaction. In Aveiro in northern Portugal, he talked with Catholic foes of the Communists and visited a debris-strewn Communist headquarters that had been wrecked by angry townspeople. The local Communist boss at first refused to talk with the "fascist reactionary press, who only tell lies about us," but agreed to do so after he learned that Taber had already interviewed Communist Leader Alvaro Cunhal.

Madrid Bureau Chief Gavin Scott did most of the reporting from Lisbon, where he has good sources close to the ruling three-man junta. "Some of the military and government officials may say they are indifferent to world attention," Scott reports, "but from my experience, they seem to relish it." Within 48 hours of his arrival in the Portuguese capital in October 1974, Scott had arranged to talk with the President, the Premier, and the chief of the nation's Communist Party. The accessibility and volubility of Portuguese leaders contrasts sharply with the remoteness of government officials in his home base, Franco's Spain. There, he plots appointments for interviews well in advance and finds that "covering politics in Madrid is a relentless search for holes in the monolith."

On his many visits to Portugal in the past year, Scott has had only one disagreeable incident: his suitcase was delivered from his plane to the Lisbon terminal bearing the inscription "You are a fascist." "It was doubtless the work of an anonymous baggage handler giving vent to free expression," says Scott imperturbably, "a liberty I personally hope he continues to enjoy."

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