Party's origins and formation (1919–1926) Portuguese Maximalist Federation 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
revolutionary syndicalists of the more radical sectors of the
labour movement founded the
Portuguese Maximalist Federation. Two years before, the
October revolution had occurred, which led to the creation of the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Despite this, another centre opened in the Portuguese workers' movement, claiming that the syndicalist organization, in itself, was insufficient in a new social order.
Foundation of the Portuguese Communist Party However, after three months the Portuguese Communist Party would be founded, continuing with the group of people that in the disarticulation of the Maximalist Federation demeaned the need of a communist congress. Shortly after the Party's foundation, the Communist Youth was created, that immediately established contact with the
Young Communist International. The third of the provisional organic Basis states that: However, the political divergences and personal rivalries within the Party generated a profound crisis, that lead to the arrival of a Comintern delegate, the Swiss
Jules Humbert-Droz, in mid August, 1923. Besides this, what also concerned the "international" was the organic desegregation state found in the Party, polarized in two groups, on one side Henrique Caetano de Sousa and José Pires Barreira, and on the other,
Carlos Rates, that mutually fought. In these circumstances, it would have to be established if it was possible to not only clarify the Party's political line but also pass to the social and political intervention, unifying a Party with feeble origins and diffuse thoughts, making way for its bolshevization, like the Communist International demanded. Right after the Congress, PCP became very active. Because of his absence, or not, there's an attempt of change of direction in the Party's orientation, starting to focus its propaganda on the danger of a right-wing coup and defending a left front that included the
General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and the
Democratic Leftwing Republican Party (ED).
1925 legislative elections For the 1925 legislative elections, PCP proposed an alliance, but it was rejected by the
Portuguese Socialist Party, only forming the ED/PCP bloc, where none of the eight PCP candidates, that participated in the respective lists, were elected. In "
O Trabalhador Rural", for example, considered that the Party was hidden by its allied, and that the tactic ended up manifesting negatively. However, the answers were met with hesitation and indifference, especially by the CGT, opposing to any alliance with political parties. These delegations included army and navy arsenalists, even though many elements weren't yet part of the Party, like
Bento Gonçalves. It is composed of, among others, by Bento Gonçalves, who will become secretary-general in the first meeting of the new governing body. In 1930, the foundations are set for the relaunching of the Federation of the Portuguese Communist Youths. Even though Bento wasn't yet a party official, he was arrested while working in the Navy's Arsenal, in September 1930, being deported without a trial to
Cape Verde, where he was jailed for three years. The Secretariat now consisted of other members. There were rapid vertical mobility processes. given the context of the new militants membership in a framework of great repression, having militants, a lot of the time newcomers, being called for intermediate and even superior bodies. The document also notes the absence of a Socialist Party, critics the anarcho-syndicalists and revolt republicans, persisting, however, in the idea that in those sectors there was an ongoing shift to what could lead to a likely approach to the antifascist front. Bento Gonçalves send the following note to the leaders in the interior about the transformations that would have to happen in the PCP: In April 1936, an extended meeting of the board elected a new Central Committee, having Álvaro Cunhal in it for the first time. Militants were sent to Spain to fight on the battlefront for the Republic in the
International Brigades, even though that wasn't a central goal of the Party. Nevertheless, it's estimated that there were between 500 and 1200 Portuguese fighters in the
republican ranks. The difficulties to solve the internal wars were large, and the constant police pressure lead to consecutive raids. The situation, scrutinized gruffly by Moscow, lead to the suspicion that the Party could be corrupted by police and
agent provocateur, since the rhythm of the party cadres' arrests was very high, and that the efforts to replace them from the outside showed to be ineffective. The Cadres Section of the International suspended the Party and put them under surveillance, cutting ties with it (but not expelling it), under the pretext that they remain: "in the CP of Portugal an environment, observed by the
ECCI in 1936, of corrosive provocation and fractionism of the Party". In 1939 the
Second World War starts, and he receives the task of clarifying the Party's position. The Popular Front's strategy ends, evidenced by an article on the party's newspaper: Nevertheless, the suspension meant a "practically total isolation from the international communist device". This amnesty of the Centenarians, "by coinciding with the monumental moment of the regime's propaganda", this is,
Portugal's Independence in 1140 and the Restoration of Independence in 1640, released from the
Tarrafal concentration camp almost four dozen militants, with these playing an important role in the reorganization, for example,
Militão Ribeiro,
Pedro Soares,
Sérgio Vilarigues ou Américo Gonçalves de Sousa.
Alfredo Dinis (pseudonym Alex), militant since 1936, was arrested in 1938 for having connections to the
International Red Aid, being released in 1939. The first extended meeting of the "reorganizers" was held in December 1940, in
Cova da Piedade.
Álvaro Cunhal, that probably rejoined the Party still in 1941, said, in 1992, referring to this period, that:The government declared that the PCP was definitely liquidated and such confidence showed that with the defeat of the
USSR in the war, communism would definitely be a lost cause that released from Tarrafal and other prisons in 1940 several Party leaders. In such circumstances, undertaking the reorganization, I think I can say that the PCP showed how the communists understand their duties to the people and to the country...The first step of the "reorganization" ends with the constitution of the Political Bureau and its Secretariat, coinciding with the re-release of the party's clandestine press -
O Militante, since July 1940, and
Avante! since August. Re-establishment of contact with the
Communist International is tried through the
Communist Party USA, intermediated by the writer
José Rodrigues Miguéis, being exiled there.
Pedro dos Santos Soares was the delegate of the "reorganizers" in Braga. In the war situation, they are approached by the
Secret Intelligence Service to report lists of names of pro-Nazis.
Financing problems The conjuncture and the scarce financial means made the situation more difficult. And so, important changes happened inside the Party's leadership, leading to the rise of
Álvaro Cunhal to the Secretariat, body that "will quickly acquire indisputable political authority", with
José Gregório. Due to the war situation, there is a deterioration of the living conditions of the popular layers, leading to a "reawakening of social agitation", that translates in a cycle of strikes between 1942 and 1944 and in the rural movements of 1943-45. According to the
National Institute of Work and Pensions of the Estado Novo, there where 14 thousand striking workers. Even though a lot of communist militants participated, in the report that
José Gregório (Pseudonym Alberto) presents to the III Congress, he acknowledges that: When considering the conditions as met to advance in the industrialized areas, Lisbon, Almada, Barreiro and Ribatejo, the Secretariat proclaimed that: In the manifest of the CC's Secretariat in this day, a general increase in wages and the expansion of the strike throughout the national territory are requested. This idea of an Antifascist Nacional Front was also supported by the
Communist International. It also had the goal to implement a wage policy according to the cost of living, a democratic
land reform, and the call for elections for a
Constituent Assembly. In December 1943, it is formally constituted. Despite this, there is a dissolution of the
Communist International in 1943 without the re-establishment of their ties with the PCP. This congress, that defined the tactical and strategical, political and ideological line of the PCP, took place within the framework of the "hot experience" of workers' strikes, in what came out of the VII Congress of the Communist International, and the adoption of orientations spread by the USSR. The strikes "represented the reopening of an offensive cycle of the workers' movement", in which the PCP had an important leading role. The PCP was hegemonic in the front due to the weakness in an organic level of other Parties. The Party advocated for the insurrectional overthrow of fascism, created through the fight of the masses. Cunhal clarifies, also in his report, that this movement of masses would provoke the membership of
Armed Forces sectors and police devices. According to
Avante!, in December 1943, a new working offensive was underway since autumn. In December 1943, in
Sintra, the MUNAF's constitution is institutionalized. The strike's date is set late, 8/9 May by the Secretariat, with a similar scheme as the previous ones. In July 1944, the MUNAF's emergency program is approved, coinciding with the beginning of the Nazifascism's defeat, with the
battle of Normandy and the
soviet offensive of the European East. The idea that Salazar would be swept by the Nazi's defeat was intense. The PCP's Military Committee was formed,
Fernando Piteira Santos was responsible for it, also featuring
José Magro e
Francisco Ramos da Costa. The MUNAF's body in the army and navy published the newspaper "
A Voz do Soldado". 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. One year after the revolution, the first democratic elections took place to elect the parliament that would write a new constitution to replace the constitution of 1933. The party achieved 12.52% of the vote and elected 30 members of parliament. In the end, as the party wanted, the constitution included several references to "socialism" and a "classless society" and was approved with the opposition of only one party, the right-wing
Democratic and Social Centre (Portuguese:
Centro Democrático Social or CDS). In 1976, after the approval of the constitution, the second democratic election was carried out and the PCP raised its share of the vote to 14.56% and 40 seats. In the same year, the first
Avante! Festival took place, and the eighth congress was held in Lisbon from 11–14 November. The congress mainly stated the need to continue the quest for socialism in Portugal and the need to defend the achievements of the revolution against what the party considered to be a political step backward, led by a coalition of the
Socialist Party and the right-wing
Centro Democrático Social, who opposed the agrarian reform process. In 1979, the party held its ninth congress, which analysed the state of post-revolutionary Portugal, right-wing politics, and the party's struggles to nationalize the economy. In December 1979, new elections took place. The party formed the
United People Alliance (Portuguese:
Aliança Povo Unido or APU) in coalition with the
Portuguese Democratic Movement (Portuguese:
Movimento Democrático Português or MDP/CDE) and increased its vote to 18.96% and 47 seats. The election was won by a centrist/right-wing coalition led by
Francisco Sá Carneiro, which immediately initiated policies that the party considered to be contrary to working-class interests. Despite a setback in a subsequent election in 1980, in which the PCP dropped to 41 seats, the party achieved several victories in local elections, winning the leadership of dozens of municipalities in the
FEPU coalition. After the sudden death of Sá Carneiro in an air crash in 1980, the party achieved 44 seats and 18.20% of the vote as part of the APU in the 1983 elections. Also in 1983, the party held its tenth congress, which again criticized what it saw as the dangers of right-wing politics. In 1986, the surprising rise of
Mário Soares, who reached the second round in the
presidential election, defeating the party's candidate,
Salgado Zenha, made the party call an extra congress. The eleventh congress was called with only two weeks' notice, in order to decide whether or not to support Soares against
Freitas do Amaral. Soares was supported, and he won by a slight margin. Had he not been supported by the PCP, he would have probably lost. In 1987, after the resignation of the government, another election took place. The PCP, now in the
Unitary Democratic Coalition (Portuguese:
Coligação Democrática Unitária or CDU) with the
Ecologist Party "The Greens" (Portuguese:
Partido Ecologista "Os Verdes" or PEV) and the
Democratic Intervention (Portuguese:
Intervenção Democrática or ID), saw an electoral decline to 12.18% and 31 seats.
Fall of the Socialist Bloc In 1988, the PCP held another congress, the twelfth, in which more than 2000 delegates participated and which put forth a new program entitled
Portugal, an Advanced Democracy for the 21st Century. At the end of the 1980s, the
Socialist Bloc of Eastern Europe started to disintegrate, and the party faced one of the biggest crises in its history. With many members leaving, the party called a thirteenth congress for May 1990, in which a huge ideological battle occurred. The majority of the more than 2000 delegates decided to continue the party's "revolutionary way to Socialism" — i. e., to retain its
Leninist ideology. By so doing, it clashed with what many other communist parties around the world were doing. The congress asserted that socialism in the Soviet Union had failed, but a unique historical experience, several social changes, and several achievements by the labour movement had been influenced by the Socialist Bloc. Álvaro Cunhal was re-elected secretary-general, but
Carlos Carvalhas was elected assistant secretary-general. In the
legislative election of 1991, the party won 8.84% of the national vote and 17 seats, continuing its electoral decline. The fourteenth congress took place in 1992, and
Carlos Carvalhas was elected the new secretary-general, replacing Álvaro Cunhal. The congress analysed the new international situation created by the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the defeat of socialism in Eastern Europe. The party also traced the guidelines intended to put
Cavaco Silva and the right-wing government on its way out, a fact that would happen shortly after. In 1995, the right-wing
Social Democratic Party was replaced in the government by the
Socialist Party after the
October legislative election, in which the PCP received 8.61% of the votes. In December 1996, the fifteenth congress was held, this time in
Porto, with more than 1600 delegates participating. The congress criticized the right-wing policies of the socialist government of
António Guterres, and debated the future of the PCP following the debacle of the Socialist Bloc. In the subsequent local elections, the party continued to decline, but in the
legislative election of 1999, the party increased its voting percentage for the first time in many years. The sixteenth congress was held in December 2000, and Carlos Carvalhas was re-elected secretary-general. In the
legislative election of 2002, the PCP achieved its lowest voting result ever, with only 7.0% of the vote. In November 2004, the seventeenth party congress elected
Jerónimo de Sousa, a former metal worker, as the new secretary-general. In the
legislative election of February 2005, the Party increased its share of the vote, and won 12 of the 230 seats in parliament, receiving about 430,000 votes (7.60%). After the 2005 local election, in which the PCP regained the presidency of 7 municipalities, the party holds the leadership of 32 (of 308) municipalities, most of them in
Alentejo and
Setúbal, and holds the leadership of hundreds of civil parishes and local assemblies. The local administration by PCP is usually marked by concern about such issues as preventing privatization of the water supply, funding culture and education, providing access to sports, and promoting health, facilitating
participatory democracy, and preventing corruption. The presence of the Greens in the coalition also keeps an eye on environmental issues such as
recycling and water treatment. The PCP's work now follows the program of an "Advanced Democracy for the 21st Century". Issues like the decriminalization of
abortion,
workers' rights, the increasing fees for the health service and education, the erosion of the
social safety net, low salaries and pensions, imperialism and war, and solidarity with other countries such as
Iraq,
Afghanistan,
Palestine,
Cuba, and the
Basque Country are constant concerns in the party's agenda. 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 sp deputy, it now has two members who sit in the
European United Left-Nordic Green Left group in the
European Parliament.
Reaction to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine 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 in November 2022, following similar statements from fellow MPs. == Ideology and principles ==