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Portuguese Communist Party

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Politics and government

                                                Portuguese Communist Party

                                                      Politics of Portugal

                                                           Communist Youth
                                                          FEPU - APU - CDU
                                                      European United Left

                                                      History of the Party
                                                         Electoral results

                                                                   Avante!
                                                               O Militante
                                                          Avante! Festival
                                                     Portuguese Communists

                                                                  Portugal
                                                     Elections in Portugal

                                                                 Communism
                                                          Marxism-Leninism
                                                        Communist Movement
                                                          Communism Portal

   The Portuguese Communist Party (Portuguese: Partido Comunista
   Português, pron. IPA: [pɐɾ'tidu kumu'niʃtɐ puɾtu'geʃ] or PCP), is a
   major left-wing political party in Portugal. It is a Marxist-Leninist
   party and its organization is based upon democratic centralism. The
   Party also considers itself to be patriotic and internationalist.

   The Party was founded in 1921 as the Portuguese section of the
   Communist International ( Comintern). Made illegal after a coup in the
   late 1920s, the PCP played a major role in the opposition to the
   following dictatorial regime led, for many years, by António de
   Oliveira Salazar. During the five decades long dictature, the party was
   constantly suppressed by the political police, the PIDE, which forced
   its members to live in clandestine status, under the threat of being
   arrested, tortured or murdered. After the bloodless Carnation
   Revolution, in 1974, which overthrew the 48-year regime, the 36 members
   of its Central Committee had, in the aggregate, experienced more than
   300 years in jail.

   After the end of the dictatorship, with the Carnation Revolution in
   1974, the party became a major political force within the new
   democratic regime, mainly among the working class. Despite being less
   influential since the fall of the Socialist bloc in eastern Europe, it
   still enjoys popularity in vast sectors of Portuguese society,
   particularly in the rural areas of the Alentejo and Ribatejo, and also
   in the heavily industrialized areas around Lisbon and Setúbal, where it
   holds the leadership of several municipalities.

   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.

History of the Portuguese Communist Party

Origins and foundation of the Party

   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 vast wave of strikes. Supported by an
   emerging Labour movement, the workers achieved some of their
   objectives, such as the historic victory of an eight-hour working day.

   In September of 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 some time members of the FMP started to feel the need for a
   "revolutionary vanguard" among Portuguese workers. After several
   meetings at various Labor Union offices, and with the aid of the
   Comintern, this desire culminated in the foundation of the Portuguese
   Communist Party as the Portuguese Section of the Communist
   International (Comintern), in March 6 of 1921.

   Unlike virtually all other European Communist Parties, the PCP was not
   formed after a split of a Social Democratic or Socialist Party, but
   from the ranks of Anarcho-Syndicalism and revolutionary syndicalism.
   Both of these groups, at the time, were the most active factions of the
   Portuguese labor movement. The Party opened its first headquarters in
   the Arco do Marquês do Alegrete Street in Lisbon. Seven months after
   its creation, the first issue of O Comunista (The Communist), the first
   newspaper of the Party, was published.

   The first congress of the Party took place in Lisbon in November 1923,
   with Carlos Rates leading the Party. The congress was attended by about
   a hundred members of the Party and asserted its solidarity with
   Socialism in the Soviet Union and the need for a strong struggle for
   similar policies in Portugal; it also stated that a Fascist uprising in
   Portugal was a serious threat to the Party and to the country.

Outlawing of the Party and the long clandestine struggle

   After the military coup of May 28, 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 the tasks. In
   1927 the Party's Main Office was closed. The party was first
   reorganized in 1929 under Bento Gonçalves. Adapting the Party to its
   new illegal status, the reorganization created a net of clandestine
   cells to avoid a wave of detentions.

   Meanwhile, in 1938, the Portuguese Communist Party had been expelled
   from the Communist International. The reason for the expulsion was a
   sense of distrust inside 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 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 some sporadic contacts made, at
   first, 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 Cape
   Verde Islands. This included Bento Gonçalves, who would die there. The
   vast wave of arrests led to a major reorganization in 1940–41, named
   the "Reorganization of '40". The first congress after such 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. At the time, the Party was able, for the first time, to assure a
   strong clandestine organization, with a net 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 in order 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 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 lead 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 in order to improve
   the relations with the Socialist Bloc. Later, in 1948, he travelled to
   the Soviet Union in order to speak with Mikhail Suslov, after what the
   bonds between the PCP and the International Communist Movement were
   re-established. Soon after returning from the Soviet Union, Cunhal was
   arrested by Salazar's political police, the PIDE.

   The fifth congress, held in September 1957, was the first and the only
   to be held outside Portugal. In Kiev, Soviet Union, the Party approved
   its first program and statutes. The congress took, for the first time,
   an official position on Colonialism, stating that every people had the
   right of self-determination, and made clear its support of the
   liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies, such as MPLA in
   Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique and PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau.

   In January 1960, a group of ten PCP members managed to escape from the
   high-security prison in Peniche. The escape returned to freedom many
   top figures of the Party, among them, Álvaro Cunhal, who would be
   elected in the following year the first Secretary-general in nineteen
   years. Among the escapees was also Jaime Serra, who would help to
   organize a secret commando group, the Armed Revolutionary Action
   (Portuguese: Acção Revolucionária Armada or ARA). The ARA was the armed
   branch of the PCP that would be responsible in the 1970s for some
   military action against the dictatorial regime.

   In 1961 the Colonial War in Africa began, first in Angola, and in the
   next year in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. The war lasted thirteen
   years and devastated Portuguese society, forcing many thousands of
   Portuguese citizens to leave the country, both to seek a better future
   in countries like France, Germany or Switzerland and to escape
   conscription. The Party, which had been involved in the formation of
   the nationalist guerrilla movements, along with the Soviet Union,
   immediately stated its opposition to the war, and its support for the
   anti-colonial movements. The war, prompting growing unrest inside
   Portuguese society, helped lead to the decline of the Salazar regime.

   In 1962 the " Academic Crisis" occurred. The regime, fearing the
   growing popularity of democratic ideas among the students, made several
   student associations and organizations illegal, including the important
   National Secretariat of Portuguese Students. Most members of this
   organization were intellectual communist militants that were persecuted
   and forbidden to continue their university studies. The students, with
   strong aid from the PCP, responded with demonstrations that culminated
   on March 24 with a huge student demonstration in Lisbon. The
   demonstration was brutally suppressed by the police, leading to
   hundreds of student injuries. Immediately thereafter, the students
   began a strike against the regime.

   In the sixth congress, in 1965, Álvaro Cunhal, elected
   General-secretary in 1961, released the report The Path to Victory—The
   Tasks of the Party in the National and Democratic Revolution which
   became a document of major influence among 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 April 25, 1974, the Carnation Revolution occurred,
   putting an end to forty-eight years of resistance and marking the
   beginning of a new cycle in the Party's life.

Carnation Revolution of 1974 and the first years of democracy

   Immediately after the revolution, basic democratic rights were
   re-established in Portugal. On April 27, political prisoners were
   freed. On April 30, 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 May 1st Stadium) in Lisbon to hear the speeches of
   the Party's leader Álvaro Cunhal and the socialist Mário Soares. On May
   17, 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 one year, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde and
   São Tomé and Príncipe became independent countries.

   Six months after the 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 January 12, 1975
   the Portuguese Communist Party became the first legally recognized
   party.

   The revolutionary process continued. On 11 March 1975, the left-wing
   military forces defeated a coup attempt by rightists in the military.
   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 this 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 Party took the lead of that process and
   drove it according to the Party's program, organizing large thousands
   of peasants into cooperatives. That, combined with the Party's strong
   clandestine organization and support of the peasants' movement during
   the preceding years in that region, made the south of Portugal the
   major stronghold of the PCP. The Party gained more than half of the
   votes in Beja, Évora and Setúbal in the subsequent elections.

   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
   voting and elected 30 MPs. 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 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 Party raised its share of the vote to
   14.56% and 40 MPs. In that 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 carried out its ninth congress, which analyzed the
   state of the 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 MPs. The
   election was won by a centre/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 aircrash in 1980, the Party
   achieved 44 MPs and 18.20% of the vote as part of the APU in the 1983
   elections. Also in 1983 the Party held the tenth congress that 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 Party, now in the
   Unitarian 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 MPs.

The end of the Socialist Bloc and new challenges

   In 1988 another congress took place, the twelfth, in which more than
   2,000 delegates participated, and which put forth a new program,
   titled, "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 an extra
   thirteenth congress for May 1990, in which a huge ideological battle
   occurred. The majority of the more than 2,000 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 General Secretary, but Carlos Carvalhas was
   elected Assistant General Secretary.

   In the legislative election of 1991 the Party won 8.84% of the national
   vote and 17 MPs, continuing its electoral decline.

   The fourteenth congress took place in 1992 and Carlos Carvalhas was
   elected the new General Secretary, replacing Álvaro Cunhal. The
   Congress analyzed the whole 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 Party received 8.61% of the
   votes.

   In December 1996 the fifteenth congress was held, this time in Porto,
   with more than 1,600 delegates participating. The congress criticized
   the right-wing policies of the Socialist government of António Guterres
   and also debated the future of the Party 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 of 2000 and Carlos Carvalhas was
   re-elected General Secretary. In the legislative election of 2002 the
   Party achieved its lowest voting result ever, with only 7.0% of the
   votes.

   The most recent Congress, the seventeenth, in November 2004 elected
   Jerónimo de Sousa, a former metallurgical worker, as the new General
   Secretary.

   In the legislative election of February 2005 the Party increased its
   share of the vote and is now represented in the parliament by 12 MPs of
   230, after receiving about 430,000 votes (7.60%).

   After the last local election, in 2005, in which the Party regained the
   presidency of 7 municipalities, the Portuguese Communist Party holds
   the leadership of 32 (of 308) municipalities, most of them in Alentejo
   and Setúbal, and helds the leadership of hundreds of civil parishes and
   local assemblies. The local administration by PCP is usually marked by
   concern about issues such 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 Party's work now follows the program of "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. Since 21 April 2005, Portugal has
   awaited a referendum on abortion decriminalization.

   The Party has two members ( Ilda Figueiredo and Pedro Guerreiro)
   elected to the European Parliament after achieving 9.2% of the vote in
   the European Election of 2004. They sit in the European United Left -
   Nordic Green Left group.

Party's electoral results

Results in the last 10 elections

   Results in the last 10 elections
   (year links to election page)
   Year Coalition Type of Election Votes % Mandates
   1994

                                     CDU

                             European Parliament

                                   339,283

                                    11.2%

                                      3

   1995

                                     CDU

                            Portuguese Parliament

                                   504,007

                                    8.6%

                                     15

   1997

                                     CDU

                                    Local

                                   643,956

                                    12.0%

                                     236

   1999

                                     CDU

                             European Parliament

                                   357,575

                                    10.3%

                                      2

   1999

                                     CDU

                            Portuguese Parliament

                                   483,716

                                    9.0%

                                     17

   2001

                                     CDU

                                    Local

                                   557,481

                                    10.6%

                                     202

   2002

                                     CDU

                            Portuguese Parliament

                                   378,640

                                    7.0%

                                     12

   2004

                                     CDU

                             European Parliament

                                   309,406

                                    9.1%

                                      2

   2005

                                     CDU

                            Portuguese Parliament

                                   432,009

                                    7.6%

                                     14

   2005

                                     CDU

                                    Local

                                   590,496

                                    11.0%

                                     203

   (source: Portuguese Electoral Commission)

   Note:
     * In 2004, after the enlargement of the European Union, the number of
       MEPs elected by Portugal decreased from the original 25 to 24.
     * The Local election results report the voting for the Municipal
       Chambers only and don't include occasional coalitions in some
       municipalities, e.g. in Lisbon, between 1989 and 2001. Voting for
       the Municipal Assemblies and Parish Assemblies is usually higher
       (11.7% and 12.0%, respectively, in 2005).
     * The number of mandates denotes the number of councillors in Local
       elections, MPs in Parliamentary elections and MEPs in European
       Parliament elections.
     * The CDU is composed of the PCP, the PEV and the ID

Results in presidential elections

   Results in Presidential Elections
   (year links to election page)
   Year Candidate supported Votes % Elected?
   1976

                           Octávio Rodrigues Pato

                                   365,344

                                    7.6%

                                     No

   1980

                           Carlos Alfredo de Brito

                                  withdrew

                                      -

                                     No

   1986

                           Francisco Salgado Zenha

                                  1,185,867

                                    20.6%

                                     No

   1991

                          Carlos Alberto Carvalhas

                                   635,867

                                    12.9%

                                     No

   1996

                         Jerónimo Carvalho de Sousa

                                  withdrew

                                      -

                                     No

   2001

                          António Simões de Abreu

                                   221,886

                                    5.1%

                                     No

   2006

                         Jerónimo Carvalho de Sousa

                                   466,428

                                    8.6%

                                     No

   (source: Portuguese Electoral Commission)

   Notes:
     * In 1980, Carlos Brito withdrew in favour of Ramalho Eanes.
     * In 1986, the Party's first candidate was Ângelo Veloso, that later
       withdrew in favour of Salgado Zenha.
     * In 1986, in the second round, the Party supported Mário Soares.
     * In 1996, Jerónimo de Sousa withdrew in favour of Jorge Sampaio.

Political principles and internal organization

Political principles

   The Party's statutes define it as the political party of the
   proletariat and of all Portuguese workers and also as the vanguard of
   all working people. 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 the 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 Portuguese Communist Party takes Marxism-Leninism as its
   theoretical basis, which is a materialist and dialectic 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.

Internal organization

   The main principle that guides the Party's internal structure, being a
   Leninist party, is Democratic centralism, which implies that all party
   organs are elected from bottom to top and may be dismissed by those who
   elected them, if needed; the members who have tasks in any structure of
   the Party are responsible to both lower and upper levels, being obliged
   to report the activities to both and to give consideration to their
   opinions and criticisms; lower-level structures must respect the
   decisions of the upper structures; every member is free to give his
   opinion during the discussion and the structures must take in account
   the contribution of every member; every member must obey the decisions
   achieved by consensus or by a majority; every member must work along
   with his own structure; the Party does not recognize the possible
   existence of organized factions inside it.

   The structure and internal organization of the Portuguese Communist
   Party are defined by its statutes. The most recent statutes were
   approved in the seventeenth congress, held in 2004. The upper organs of
   the Portuguese Communist Party at a national scale are the Congress,
   the Central Committee (CC), and the Central Commission of Control.

   The supreme organ of the Party is its Congress, which is summoned by
   the outgoing CC and held every four years. The Congress is composed of
   delegates elected by the respective lower organs proportionally to each
   organ's membership size. The congress approves its theses after a wide
   discussion period inside the organizations and may also change the
   Party's program and statutes. All the decisions of the Congress are
   made by the delegates voting. With the exception of the voting for the
   CC, which a recent Portuguese law requires to be secret, all voting,
   including the approval of the theses, are conducted by a show of hands.
   The theses, after approval, guide all the Party's political actions and
   stances until the next Congress.

   The main organ between the congresses is the Central Committee, which
   is elected in the congresses under a proposal of the retiring CC. This
   proposal may only be made after a long period of hearing the lower
   structures in order to include in it the names they propose. The CC may
   not change the orientation present in the congress' theses. The main
   task of the CC is to define the guidelines of the Party's political
   work and decide the immediate tasks of the Party, assuring that the
   lower structures comply with those decisions. The CC elects, from its
   members, its Political Bureau, its Secretariat and also the Central
   Commission of Control. This last must assure the compliance between the
   Party's activities and the statutes, and control the Party's finances.
   The CC may, or may not, elect the Party's General Secretary from its
   members.

   The intermediate organs of the Party are, by rule, the organs that
   coordinate an organization of district, municipality and parish levels,
   but organizations at a neighbourhood or professional class level also
   exist. The main organ of an intermediate part of the party's structure
   is the Assembly. The Assembly works as a small Congress for the
   organization members. The Assembly elects the regional or municipal
   committees, which are responsible for applying the theses of the
   Assembly to the organization's work.

   The base level organ of the Party is the cell. The cell is defined as
   being the link between the Party and the working class and the masses.
   A cell is composed of a minimum of three Party members and exists at a
   work place or neighbourhood level. The cell may elect its own
   secretariat, which has the responsibility of discussing and putting
   into practice the Party's guidelines. The cell must ensure the
   recruitment of new members, promote the reading of the Avante! and the
   other publications, ensure that the members pay their quota and keep
   the upper structures aware of the cell's political work.

The youth organization

   JCP logo

   The youth organization of PCP is the Portuguese Communist Youth
   (Portuguese: Juventude Comunista Portuguesa) and was founded in
   November 10, 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
   organization smantain 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.

Avante! Festival

   Avante Party 2005 Poster
   Picture of the main stage of Avante Festival in 2001
   Enlarge
   Picture of the main stage of Avante Festival in 2001

   Every year, in the first weekend of September, the party holds a
   gigantic festival, 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
   town 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 organised 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) and sporting events. Several foreign communist
   parties also participate.

   Famous artists, 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, The Soviet Circus Company, the
   Kuban Cossacks Choir, Dexys Midnight Runners, The Band, Hevia, Brigada
   Victor Jara, Adriano Correia de Oliveira, Carlos Paredes, Jorge Palma,
   Manoel de Oliveira 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 for the hard work of building a small town in a few
   months.
     * Avante! Festival main website
     * Complete list of the artists present in the 27 editions of the
       Festival

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