Álvaro Cunhal (10 November 1913 – 13 June 2005) was a Portuguese Revolutionary writer, politician and one of the major opponents of the fascist regime Estado Novo.
An important figure of Marxism in Portugal, he’s also considered the basis for the movement and the ideology in Portugal, but also having a timid attitude and a quite reserved personality, being described by multiple biographical authors as “The man who does not want to be a subject to biography”, that demonstrates the will to know the movement better than to know those who support it.
Despite this, his fight against the dictatorship is well-known as well as his constant support to the proletariat and the party (for which he was secretary-general between 1961 and 1991).
Biography
Born in Coimbra, Sé Nova in 10th of November 1913, Álvaro spent some of his childhood in Seia. His family moved to Lisbon where he would attend the Pedro Nunes school, although he later attended the Camões school.
Having graduated High School, he attended Law School at University of Lisbon where he started his revolutionary activism while also participating in the student associative movement, being elected in 1934 as the student representative in the University Senate. He was a member of the Youth Federation of the Portuguese Communists, was elected as secretary general in 1935, while being a member of the Portuguese Communist Party at the same time and since 1931. In 1935, he integrated the cadre of Clandestine Militants.
Arrested in 1937 and again in 1940 and subjected to torture, he immediately returned to the struggle as soon as he was released after a few months in prison.
After which he participated in the reorganization of the Portuguese Communist Party of 1940/41 and it’s elected member of the Secretariat in 1942, position he held until 1949 where he was again arrested while was living underground. He spent the whole 50’s in fascist prisons, taken to court, he criticized the dictatorship and defended the Party. Found guilty, he spent the next eleven years in jail, in which eight were spent in complete isolation – Without never losing the track of time. Being transferred from Lisbon’s Penitentiary to the prison-fortress of Peniche, he escaped with the help of other important Communists Militants.
The period between the beginning of the 60s until the Carnation Revolution is intense. He Integrated, once again, the Secretariat of the Central Committee, where he was elected Secretary-General of the Portuguese Communist Party in March 1961. He intervened directly when the direction was to go with right-wing parties and for the battle against the right-wing opportunism. Gave a decisive analysis of the National situation, in the description of the fascist regime, in plotting the orientation, in definition of tasks and in the brilliant political direction of the party, creating opportunities for the Revolution of April and its development, and after the Revolution, after almost forty years of struggle underground or in prison, he developed political action through the conditions that the Revolution gave.
He then became a minister in the first four Provisional Governments and was elected Deputy for the constituent Assembly in 197. Between 1975 and 1987, he was in the Assembly of the Republic and was also a member of the State Council from 1982 to 1992. His intervention in the development phase of the revolutionary process and later in the defense of the gains of the revolution reached by the counter-revolutionary process, it’s profoundly marked by the evaluation and the stimulus to the role of the struggle of the proletariat.[1]
In the application of the decisions of the XIV Congress of the PCP (in 1992) regarding the renewal and the new leadership structure, he ceased to be General Secretary of the PCP and was elected by the Central Committee President of the National Council of the Party.
In December 1996 (at the XV Congress of the PCP) the National Council of the PCP and the position of President were extinguished, he was re-elected as a member of the Central Committee, which also happened at the XVI and XVII Congresses, respectively in 2000 and 2004.
Author of a vast work published both on the political and ideological level, and on the literary level, namely under the pseudonym of “Manuel Tiago”, as well as in the field of plastic arts.
He died at the age of 92, on June 13 2005. Thousands attended his funeral, in solidarity with his work and the communist party.