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Political party in Portugal

The Portuguese Communist Party (Partido Comunista Português, pɐɾˈtiðu kumuˈniʃtɐ puɾtuˈɣeʃ, PCP) is a communist, Marxist–Leninist political party in Portugal based upon democratic centralism. The party also considers itself patriotic and internationalist, and it is characterized as being between the left wing and far left on the political spectrum. The party was founded in 1921, establishing contacts with the Comintern in 1922 and becoming its Portuguese section in 1923. The PCP was banned after the 1926 military coup and subsequently played a major role in the opposition against the dictatorial regime of António de Oliveira Salazar. During the nearly five decade long dictatorship, the PCP was constantly suppressed by the secret police, which forced the party's members to live in clandestine status under the threat of arrest, torture, and murder. After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, which overthrew the regime, the 36 members of party's Central Committee had, in the aggregate, experienced more than 300 years in jail. After the end of the dictatorship, the party became a major political force in the new democratic government. One of its goals, according to the party is to maintain its "vanguard role in the service of the class interests of the workers". Currently, the PCP is the joint sixth largest in the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic, where it holds 4 of the 230 assembly seats. The party publishes the weekly Avante!, founded in 1931. Its youth organization is the Portuguese Communist Youth, a member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth.

At the end of World War I, in 1918, Portugal fell into a serious economic crisis, in part due to the Portuguese military intervention in the war. The Portuguese working classes responded to the deterioration in their living standards with a wave of strikes. Supported by an emerging labour movement, the workers achieved some of their objectives, such as an eight hour working day. In September 1919, the working class movement founded the first Portuguese Labour Union Confederation, the General Confederation of Labour; however, the feeling of political powerlessness, due to the lack of a coherent political strategy among the Portuguese working class, plus the growing popularity of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917, led to the foundation of the Portuguese Maximalist Federation (FMP) in 1919. The goal of FMP was to promote socialist and revolutionary ideas and to organize and develop the worker movement.

After the military coup of 28 May 1926, the party was outlawed and had to operate in secrecy. By coincidence, the coup was carried out on the eve of the second congress, forcing the suspension of party business. In 1927, the party's main office was closed. The party was first re organized in 1929 under Bento Gonçalves. Adapting its new illegal status, the party re organized as a network of clandestine cells. Meanwhile, in 1938, the PCP had been expelled from the Comintern. The reason for the expulsion was a sense of distrust in the Comintern caused by a sudden breakdown in the party's activity after a period of strong communist tumult in the country, accusations of alleged embezzlement of money carried out by some important members of the party and, mainly, the weak internal structure of the party, dominated by internal wars. The action against the PCP, signed by Georgi Dimitrov, was in part taken due to some persecution against Comintern member parties or persons (like the Communist Party of Poland or Béla Kun) led by Joseph Stalin. These series of events would, in part, lead to the end of the Comintern in 1943. The PCP would only re establish its relations with the communist movement and the Soviet Union in 1947, after sporadic contacts made through the communist parties of Spain and France and later through Mikhail Suslov. After the 1933 rise of Salazar's dictatorial Estado Novo regime, suppression of the party grew. Many members were arrested, tortured, and executed. Many were sent to the Tarrafal concentration camp in the Cape Verde Islands. This included Bento Gonçalves, who would die there. The vast wave of arrests led to a major re organization in 1940 and 1941, named the "Reorganization of '40". The first congress held after these changes was held in 1943, and stated that the party should unite with all those who also wanted an end to the dictatorship. Another important conclusion was the need to increase the party's influence inside the Portuguese army. The party was able, for the first time, to assure a strong clandestine organization, with a network of clandestine cadres, which would significantly aid the resistance against Salazar's regime. In 1945, with the defeat of the major fascist regimes in World War II, Salazar was forced to fake some democratic changes to keep up a good image in the eyes of the West, so in October of that year, the democratic resistance was authorized to form a platform, which was named Movement of Democratic Unity (Portuguese: Movimento de Unidade Democrática, or MUD). Initially, the MUD was controlled by the moderate opposition, but it soon became strongly influenced by the PCP, which controlled its youth wing. In the leadership of the youth wing were several communists, among them Octávio Pato, Salgado Zenha, Mário Soares, Júlio Pomar, and Mário Sacramento. This influence led to the MUD being outlawed by the government in 1948, after several waves of suppression. The fourth congress, held in July 1946, pointed to massive popular struggle as the only way to overthrow the regime, and stated the policies that would help the party leaders that same popular movement. This, along with the consolidation of the clandestine work, was the main conclusion of the congress. A brief report of the conclusions of this congress were published by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. At this time, Álvaro Cunhal travelled to Yugoslavia with the aid of Bento de Jesus Caraça to improve relations with the Socialist Bloc. Later, in 1948, he travelled to the Soviet Union to speak with Mikhail Suslov, after which the bonds between the PCP and the International Communist Movement were re established. In 1962, the Academic Crisis occurred. The Salazar regime, fearing the growing popularity of democratic ideas among students, made several student associations and organizations illegal, including the National Secretariat of Portuguese Students. Most members of this organization were intellectual communist militants who were persecuted and forbidden to continue their university studies. With assistance from the PCP, the students responded with demonstrations that culminated on 24 March with a large student demonstration in Lisbon. The demonstration was brutally suppressed by the police, leading to hundreds of injuries among the protesters. Immediately thereafter, the students began a strike against the regime. In the sixth congress, in 1965, Álvaro Cunhal, elected secretary general in 1961, released the report, The Path to Victory—The Tasks of the Party in the National and Democratic Revolution, written while he was in exile in Moscow in collaboration with Margarida Tengarrinha, which became a document of major influence in the democratic movement. Widely distributed among the clandestine members, it contained eight political goals, such as "the end of the monopolies in the economy", "the need for agrarian reform and redistribution of the land", and "the democratization of access to culture and education" — policies that the Party considered essential to make Portugal a fully democratic country. Nine years later, on 25 April 1974, the Carnation Revolution occurred, putting an end to 48 years of resistance and marking the beginning of a new cycle in the party's life.

Immediately after the revolution, basic democratic rights were re established in Portugal. On 27 April, political prisoners were freed. On 30 April, Álvaro Cunhal returned to Lisbon, where he was received by thousands of people. May Day was commemorated for the first time in 48 years, and an estimated half million people gathered in the FNAT Stadium (now 1 May Stadium) in Lisbon to hear speeches by Cunhal and the socialist Mário Soares. On 17 May, the party's newspaper, Avante!, produced the first legal issue in its history. The following months were marked by radical changes in the country, always closely followed and supported by PCP. A stormy process to give independence to the colonies started with the full support of the party and, within a year, Guinea Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe became independent countries. Six months after the Carnation Revolution, on 20 October 1974, the party's seventh congress took place. More than a thousand delegates and hundreds of Portuguese and foreign guests attended. The congress set forth important statements that discussed the ongoing revolution in the country. The 36 members of the elected central committee had in the aggregate experienced more than 300 years in jail. On 26 December 1974, the PCP became the first legally recognized party. This resulted in a turn in the revolutionary process to the political left, with the main sectors of the economy, such as the banks, transportation, steel mills, mines, and communications companies, being nationalized. This was done under the lead of Vasco Gonçalves, a member of the military wing who supported the party and who had become prime minister after the first provisional government resigned. The party then asserted its complete support for these changes and for the Agrarian Reform process that implemented collectivization of the agricultural sector and the land in a region named the "Zone of Intervention of the Agrarian Reform" or "ZIRA", which included the land south of the Tagus River. The new proposal was reluctantly approved by the Portuguese president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. After the 2019 European Parliament election in Portugal the party lost one european deputy, it now has two members who sit in the European United Left Nordic Green Left group in the European Parliament.

Since the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the PCP has come under the spotlight for being the sole political party represented in Parliament to have avoided a clear condemnation of Russia from the start, choosing instead to repeatedly blame the United States, the European Union and NATO for the war. On 24 February (the first day of the invasion), the party refused to condemn Russia, upon being explicitly invited to do so by Foreign Affairs Minister Augusto Santos Silva (Socialist Party) in a parliamentary debate. The communists stated that the conflict was "more profound" than "a problem between Russians and Ukrainians", and instead blamed the United States, accusing them of being "the party that is truly interested in having a new war in Europe" and of "promoting" it in order to "turn attentions away from internal problems" and to "ensure a large scale sale of weapons". On 1 March, the two Communist Party members of the European Parliament voted against a resolution condemning the invasion. The party said the resolution was "fuelling the escalation", "seeking to impose a unilateral view" and "justifying the colossal process of increasing military expenditures, the strengthening and expansion of NATO and the militarisation of the EU". The document was approved with more than 600 votes in favour, 13 against and 26 abstentions. On 8 March, the PCP's leader Jerónimo de Sousa blamed all entities involved in the war (Russia included, although referring to its actions by the Kremlin's language of a "military operation"). He stated the party condemned "the whole process of meddling and of confrontation which took place [in Ukraine], the US promoted coup d'état in 2014, Russia's recent military intervention and the intensification of the bellicose escalation made by the US, NATO and the EU". On 20 April, the PCP announced that it would not attend the Parliament's solemn session where President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky would speak, the following day. The party's parliamentary leader Paula Santos rejected condoning "the participation of someone who personifies a xenophobic and bellicose power", calling the session a "stage to contribute for the escalation of war". On 23 April, questioned by a journalist as to whether he considered that there was an invasion going on, party leader Jerónimo de Sousa replied: "There was a military operation which we have condemned." Following the journalist's insistence on the question, he rejected using the word 'invasion' and instead hesitantly responded: "At least, from the images we have from the images we have, there is a conflict, there is a war. That is unavoidable and must be recognised." The word 'invasion' would later be used officially by new secretary general Paulo Raimundo, following similar statements from fellow MPs.

The PCP's statutes define the party as the vanguard of the Portuguese proletariat. That vanguard role results from its class nature and its close liaison with the masses, mobilizing them and winning their support. The PCP organizes in its ranks industrial and office workers, small and medium farmers, intellectuals and technical workers, small and medium shopkeepers, and industrialists, who fight for democracy and for socialism. The party considers itself the legitimate pursuer of the Portuguese people's best traditions of struggle and of their progressive and revolutionary achievements throughout their history. The PCP upholds Marxism–Leninism as its theoretical basis, which is a materialist and dialectical conception of the world and a scientific tool of social analysis. These principles guide the party's action and enable it to systematically answer new challenges and realities. The party also orients its members and its activity in the spirit of proletarian internationalism, of cooperation between the communist parties and revolutionary and progressive forces, and of solidarity with the workers of other countries.

The main principle that guides the party's internal structure, being a Leninist party, is democratic centralism, which implies that: Many times, the newspaper distribution suffered breakdowns due to the suppression by the political police of party members who helped to distribute the newspaper, or due to the destruction of the clandestine printing offices. Successfully evading official censorship, Avante! was one of the very few Portuguese newspapers that freely reported on events like World War II, the Colonial War in Africa or massive workers' strikes and waves of student protest against the dictatorship. Avante! continues to be printed after more than three decades of democracy, and has now a full online edition. The Avante! Festival was named after the newspaper. During the campaign for the Portuguese legislative election of 2005, the party created a radio broadcast on its website and also a digital forum, being the first Portuguese party to use the internet actively in an electoral campaign. After the last Congress, the statutes were changed and the party now considers its website as another official media and it is regularly updated. The campaign radio broadcast evolved into an online radio station named Comunic. It broadcasts thematic interviews with party's members, music and propaganda. Usually, the party's largest political campaigns and struggles are supported by the distribution of a massive number of leaflets and advertising posters in hot spots like train stations, factories, universities, main streets, and avenues or markets. The free television spots that the Portuguese law grants to the parties, either in the campaign time or out of it, are used by PCP to promote initiatives and political campaigns. The party also owns a publishing company, Edições Avante! (Avante! Editions), that publishes and sells several books related to the party's history or to Marxism. Classics of Marxism–Leninism, such as The Communist Manifesto, Capital, On the Jewish Question, or What is to be Done?, several books of Portuguese authors on the history of the party and the resistance, official documents like the program or the statutes, books from foreign authors, like Ten Days that Shook the World and several other works are present in the Avante! Edition's catalog.

The youth organization of PCP is the Portuguese Communist Youth (Juventude Comunista Portuguesa), and was founded on 10 November 1979, after the unification of the Communist Students League and the Young Communist League. The Portuguese Communist Youth is a member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, a youth non governmental organization that congregates several left wing youth organizations from all the continents. The WFDY holds an international event, named World Festival of Youth and Students, in which the Portuguese Communist Youth uses to participate. The youth wing follows a structure similar to the Party's, also based on the Leninist principle of democratic centralism, and both organizations maintain a cooperative relationship. JCP is, however, an independent organization. Mainly composed by students and some working class young people, the Portuguese Communist Youth has, as its main political concerns, such issues as the promotion of a free and public education for all ages, employment, peace, and housing. It also promotes international solidarity brigades for countries like Cuba, Palestine, or Venezuela, alone or with other European Communist youth organizations like KNE or SDAJ. It has its main organizational strength among high school and university students, with a strong presence among the Students' unions.

Every year, in the first weekend of September, the party holds a festival called the Avante! Festival (Portuguese: Festa do Avante!). After taking place in different locations around Lisbon, like the Lisbon International Fair, Ajuda or Loures, it is now held in Amora, a city near Seixal, on land bought by the Party after a massive fundraising campaign in the early 1990s. The Party considered this campaign to be the only way to avoid the boycott organized by the owners of the previous festival grounds, a boycott that ultimately resulted in the Festival not being held in 1987. The festival attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors. The events themselves consist of a three day festival of music, with hundreds of Portuguese and international bands and artists across five different stages, ethnography, gastronomy, debates, a books and music fair, theatre (Avanteatro), cinema (Cineavante) and sporting events. Several foreign communist parties also participate. Famous artists, Communist and non Communist, Portuguese and non Portuguese, have performed at the Festival, including Chico Buarque, Baden Powell, Ivan Lins, Zeca Afonso, Buffy Sainte Marie, Holly Near, Johnny Clegg, Charlie Haden, Judy Collins, Richie Havens, Tom Paxton, Ska P, The Soviet Circus Company, the Kuban Cossack Choir, Dexys Midnight Runners, The Band, Hevia, Brigada Victor Jara, Adriano Correia de Oliveira, Carlos Paredes, Jorge Palma, Manoel de Oliveira, Babylon Circus, and many others. The preparation of the party begins right after the end of the previous festival. Hundreds of the Party's members and friends, mostly young people, volunteer.