The Portuguese Communist Party is founded in Lisbon: 6 March 1921

On Sunday 6 March 1921 a group of trade unionists gathered at the Lisbon headquarters of the Associação dos Empregados de Escritório, the office workers' association. They had come to found a party. By the end of the meeting the Partido Comunista Português had a National Board, an Economic Council and a General Committee for Education and Propaganda.3 sources3 sources

The work had started three months earlier. In December 1920 an organising committee was formed to create the party, and in January it began drafting its rules. Its first headquarters was a second-floor flat at number 3, Rua do Arco do Marquês do Alegrete, in Lisbon.2 sources2 sources

The founders were not young firebrands. In 1925 the party's own youth wing mocked them as the “velhada pacata”, the quiet old crowd: some 60 veteran trade unionists with 15 to 25 years of service. They came from the civil servants' association, the commercial clerks' federation, the unions of the Army and Navy arsenals, the metalworkers, the building trades, the shoemakers and the tailors.2 sources2 sources

Portugal had been a republic since 5 October 1910, and by 1921 it was an unstable one. The end of the First World War left it in political, economic and social crisis, and in December 1918 the president, Sidónio Pais, had been shot dead at Rossio station. Workers struck again and again between 1917 and 1920.2 sources2 sources

The labour movement belonged to the anarcho-syndicalists. They believed the unions themselves, not political parties, would make the revolution, and they distrusted parties of every kind. Their confederation, the CGT, was founded in September 1919 and soon claimed more than 100,000 members. Its daily, A Batalha, had a wide readership among workers.3 sources3 sources

Then came the news from Russia. The Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 drew enthusiasm from Portuguese workers who were tired of the war and of the republican parties. In 1919 Manuel Ribeiro founded the Federação Maximalista Portuguesa, with a weekly called Bandeira Vermelha (Red Flag). It stayed small: when Ribeiro was arrested in December 1920 it had five councils and a “communist centre” in Lisbon, another centre in Porto and a third being set up in Silves, and it fell apart.3 sources3 sources

By then the strike wave was running out. Some union militants concluded that strikes alone would not change anything, and that they needed what the Bolsheviks had: a disciplined party aiming to take power. The historian Arturo Zoffmann Rodríguez argues that the PCP was born from the labour movement's retreat, not from its advance.1 source1 source

At first the party grew quickly. Within months it claimed about a thousand members, and its youth organisation had 260 by October 1921. On 7 July 1921 it presented itself to the country in a manifesto that reprinted the 21 conditions for joining the Communist International, the Moscow-based federation of communist parties, and called for the abolition of private property.2 sources2 sources

Relations with the anarchists soured within months. By mid-1921 reports of the persecution of anarchists in Soviet Russia had reached Western Europe, and the CGT's leaders turned against Moscow. At the workers' congress in Covilhã in September 1922, a proposal to join the Red International of Labour Unions, Moscow's union international, was drowned out by anarchist uproar before it could be argued, and the CGT later joined the anarchist international based in Berlin.2 sources2 sources

The communists kept fighting inside the unions. From 1923 their supporters in the CGT organised as Revolutionary Syndicalist Nuclei and put out a paper, A Internacional, with a first print run of 3,000. They held the arsenal and commercial workers' unions, and early in 1925 claimed 18,000 sympathisers in the confederation. In June 1925 the unions closest to them stopped paying their dues to the CGT.1 source1 source

The party then turned on itself. In March 1923 a faction backed by the youth wing and led by Caetano de Sousa held a conference, elected a new Central Committee and expelled supporters of Carlos Rates, a pioneer of trade unionism in the Alentejo. Moscow sent the Swiss communist Jules Humbert-Droz to sort it out. At the party's first congress, which opened in Lisbon on 12 November 1923, Rates won, Caetano de Sousa was expelled and Rates became the first secretary-general.3 sources3 sources

Even the size of that congress is uncertain. The party's own history speaks of some 90 delegates from 27 organisations; Humbert-Droz reported 129, “about a quarter of the party”. Rates later admitted that the party's real strength at the time was about 300 members, against the 500 it claimed.2 sources2 sources

The historian José Pacheco Pereira traced 430 names in the press and archives of the time. Where a trade is known, most were workers, but commercial clerks and civil servants were prominent, especially in the leadership. Almost no women appear, and students were nearly absent, in contrast to the party of the 1930s.1 source1 source

It was a city party. Of the 430 members traced, 199 lived in Lisbon and 80 in Porto. After 1923 its other base grew around Beja, in the Alentejo villages of Moura, Aldeia Nova, Amareleja and Vale do Vargo. In Setúbal, by contrast, it never managed to gain a foothold.1 source1 source

The Republic's own turmoil pulled at the party. The communists gave critical support to the republican coup of October 1921, and some members joined the left-wing revolts of 1924. On 28 August 1924 a group led by Nascimento Cunha tried to storm the Castelo de São Jorge in Lisbon; the Central Committee, caught by surprise, expelled him.1 source1 source

The party lived on irregular subsidies from Moscow. In October 1924 Rates wrote that its situation was “desperate”: the paper had not appeared for three months and many members had left. In November 1925 eight communists stood on left-wing republican lists; none was elected. Rates was expelled at the end of that year after taking a job at O Século, a big Lisbon daily, and later went over to Salazar's União Nacional.2 sources2 sources

The party's second congress was called for Lisbon on 29 May 1926. The day before, on 28 May, a military coup began that would bring down the First Republic, and the congress had to break off with 100 delegates present. In 1927 the party's headquarters were closed. Surviving counts give 70 members in 1928 and 49 in 1929, though Pacheco Pereira thinks they left out many old members who kept in touch.3 sources3 sources

The man who rebuilt it was Bento Gonçalves. Born on 2 March 1902 at Fiães do Rio, in the mountains of Montalegre, he started work in Lisbon in 1915 as a wood turner, trained as a lathe operator and joined the Navy Arsenal in 1919. From 1927 he ran its union. He joined the party only in September 1928. At a conference in April 1929 he was elected secretary-general.3 sources3 sources

He set out to root the party in the unions and gave it a press. A legal paper, O Proletário, appeared on 1 May 1929, and in 1930 he founded a communist union committee, the Comissão Inter-Sindical, and a secret organisation in the Navy, the Organização Revolucionária da Armada. In September 1930 he was arrested and deported to the Azores and then to Cape Verde, returning in an amnesty in February 1933. While he was away the party grew: from about 130 members at the end of 1930, by his own count, to about 700 a year later, by a party veteran's recollection.2 sources2 sources

The first issue of Avante! appeared on 15 February 1931. For a decade it came out when it could, weekly, fortnightly or monthly, with long interruptions. At its peaks, by the party's account, more than 10,000 copies were distributed.3 sources3 sources

Salazar's dictatorship, the Estado Novo (“New State”), hunted the communists with its political police, the PVDE. On 11 November 1935 it arrested Bento Gonçalves in Lisbon together with the rest of the party's secretariat, José de Sousa and Júlio Fogaça. Torture was common practice among PVDE agents. On 3 August 1936 a special military court sentenced Gonçalves to six years' banishment.2 sources2 sources

He was among the first prisoners to reach Tarrafal, the penal camp the regime had just built on Santiago island in Cape Verde, on 29 October 1936. Lisboeta's article on Tarrafal tells the story of the camp. He died there on 11 September 1942, aged 40. The camp's telegram gave the cause as blackwater fever. The Museu do Aljube's list of people killed by the dictatorship names him among 33 men who died in the camp between 1937 and 1948.3 sources3 sources

Even from the camp Gonçalves sent instructions for a new reorganisation. In 1940 an amnesty freed dozens of prisoners, and a group around Júlio Fogaça set out to take the party back from the leadership in place. The rivals accused each other of being police provocateurs, and for a time two editions of Avante! circulated. The old leadership gave way in the summer of 1941. From August 1941 until 25 April 1974, by the party's account, Avante! came out without a break, always printed secretly inside Portugal.4 sources4 sources

José Pacheco Pereira writes that the communist of the early 1930s was already willing to put discipline before debate, but was “not yet the perfect Stalinist”, a type that in Portugal only the reorganisation of 1940 and 1941 produced (translated from Portuguese).1 source1 source

The third congress, the first held underground, met in 1943. Its report was given by Álvaro Cunhal, who would become secretary-general in March 1961 and lead the party for three decades; Lisboeta's article on his life follows that story. The party calls itself the only one to survive the repression, and the historian Adelino Cunha describes it as the one organised party fighting the Estado Novo; the Socialist Party had dissolved itself in 1933.4 sources4 sources

It stayed close to Moscow. In August 1968, when the French, Italian and Spanish communist parties held back from backing the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, Cunhal supported it, and party members in Prague, Geneva and Paris broke with the leadership in protest.1 source1 source

On 25 April 1974 a group of junior officers, the Armed Forces Movement, overthrew the dictatorship in a day. Cunhal flew home from exile on 30 April. On 17 May the first legal issue of Avante! went on sale, its front page headed “The Communists in the Provisional Government”: Cunhal was a minister without portfolio in the first four provisional governments.3 sources3 sources

On 20 October 1974 the party held its first legal congress in 48 years. The Museu do Aljube notes that the 36 members of the Central Committee elected then had spent more than 300 years in prison between them. On 26 December 1974 the PCP was entered in the new register of political parties, the earliest registration date on the list the Constitutional Court keeps today.3 sources3 sources

On 25 April 1975, in the election for the Constituent Assembly, the party won 711,935 votes, 12.46 per cent, and 30 seats. It came third, behind Mário Soares's Socialists and the Popular Democrats.2 sources2 sources

Its part in the revolution is still argued over. The Socialists accused it of wanting a communist dictatorship, which it denied. After a left-wing military revolt was put down on 25 November 1975, every party in the Constituent Assembly except the small MDP/CDE blamed the PCP, which denied planning any coup. Some writers have described its course in 1975 as an attempted “Prague coup”; the historian Raquel Varela, who studied its documents, finds no evidence that it ever attempted a putsch.3 sources3 sources

The PCP is the oldest of Portugal's parties still active, and every parliament elected since 1975 has had communist members. Since 1979 it has stood in coalitions with small allies, first the APU and since 1987 the CDU with the Greens. Its vote peaked at 18.8 per cent in 1979 and has fallen most of the way since.2 sources2 sources

In May 2025 the CDU won three seats in the Assembly. The party, whose headquarters is on Rua Soeiro Pereira Gomes in Lisbon, still publishes Avante!, and every September it holds the Festa do Avante!, a three-day festival of politics and music first held on 24 September 1976. The festival marked its 50 years at Quinta da Atalaia, in Seixal, across the Tagus from Lisbon, on 4 to 6 September 2026.4 sources4 sources

The historian Adelino Cunha calls the PCP the last purely Marxist-Leninist party in Europe. He gives three reasons for its survival: the revolutionary syndicalism of its origins, which made the street its place of action; a shared memory built over the long term, which shuts out dissidents; and its own reading of the doctrine, grounded in the struggle in Portugal, which carried it through Eurocommunism and the end of the Soviet Union.2 sources2 sources