Communist Party of Spain
Communist Party of Spain Partido Comunista de España | |
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Red | |
Congress of Deputies | 7 / 350 Inside Sumar |
Senate | 0 / 266 |
European Parliament | 2 / 54 Inside United Left |
Website | |
www | |
The Communist Party of Spain (
The PCE was founded by 1921, after a split in the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Spanish: Partido Socialista Obrero Español; PSOE). The PCE was founded by those who opposed the social democratic wing of the PSOE, because the social democrat wing did not support the PSOE's integration in the Communist International founded by Vladimir Lenin two years prior. The PCE was a merger of the Spanish Communist Party (Spanish: Partido Comunista Español) and the Spanish Communist Workers' Party (Spanish: Partido Comunista Obrero Español). The PCE was first legalized after the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in April 1931. The republic was the first democratic regime in the history of Spain. The PCE gained much support in the months before the Spanish coup of July 1936, which marked the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, and it was a major force during the war as well. The Republicans lost, and Franco established a military dictatorship, under which the PCE was one of the most heavily repressed parties, with specific laws banning communist parties,[16] among others.
Under the dictatorship, the PCE was the main opposition to the Francoist dictatorship. In the early years of the dictatorship, many PCE members joined the
Franco died on 20 November 1975, and two days later,
Since 1986, it is part of the
The youth organization of PCE is the Communist Youth Union of Spain. PCE publishes Mundo Obrero (Workers World) monthly.
History
Establishment and pre-republican era
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The PCE was the result of a merger between two organizations: the original Spanish Communist Party (
The two parties joined in the new Partido Comunista de España on 14 November 1921. The unified PCE became a member of the
By the end of 1922, the party had approximately 5,000 members.[20] The PCE's left-wing engaged in political violence, especially in Bilbao, largely directed against other leftists. A party leader's bodyguard shot and killed a Socialist in November 1922 and organized party militants attempted a general strike in August 1923 that ended in a shootout at the barricaded party headquarters, resulting in twenty communists dead or injured and another seventy arrested.[20]
With the advent of the dictatorship of
- Abolition of Primo de Rivera's dictatorshipand of the monarchy,
- Creation of a república federativa popular (federal popular republic),
- Recognition of independence for Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Morocco,
- Total freedom of association,
- Expropriation of large estates and distribution of land to peasants,
- Organization of workers' councils in industry,
- Formation of a central committee for revolution consisting of representatives from several parties as well as a military committee, and
- A planned insurrection in Madrid.[21]
- Abolition of
However, Moscow urged a cautious approach, and the
Thus, the PCE was in a very debilitated state when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed in 1931. On 3 December 1933 the first PCE parliamentarian, Cayetano Bolívar Escribano, was elected. Bolívar was jailed at the time of elections and left imprisonment to occupy his post in the parliament.
Popular Front and Civil War
PCE was a small party during the initial years of the Republic, until it began to grow due to the victory of the Popular Front (of which the Communists had been a constituent part) in February 1936 and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in July of that year. The PCE, directed by José Díaz and Dolores Ibárruri (known popularly as La Pasionaria), worked consistently for the victory of the Republican forces and the Popular Front government, but was wary of the social revolution that was being waged by Spanish workers.
The PCE leadership judged that while progressive laws could be passed, an attempt at a full-scale socialist revolution would needlessly divide the forces of the Republic. It would cause massive conflict behind republican lines, thus diverting military forces from the battle against Franco and driving many democratic republicans who were prepared to fight against the rebels into the arms of the rebels.
Being a well-knit and highly disciplined organization, the PCE could in spite of its numerical weakness play an important part in the war. In the first five months of the war, PCE grew from 30,000 members to 100,000. It also founded a Spanish branch of the
In 1936, due to the special political situation in Catalonia, Partit Comunista de Catalunya (the Catalan branch of PCE) was separated from the party to fuse with other socialists to form Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya. Since then the PCE does not have an organization in Catalonia, but relies on a regional referent party. This set-up has been imitated by many of the communist splinter groups in Spain.
Resistance and reorientation
After the Republican defeat in April 1939, the PCE was persecuted by the Nationales of caudillo Francisco Franco (1939–1975), although maintained the best organization among the opposition parties inside Spain. During the initial years of the Francoist State, PCE organized guerrilla struggles in some parts of the country.
A large part of the party membership was forced into exile. Some PCE members went to the Soviet Union and fought as volunteers for the Red Army during the Second World War, such as General Enrique Líster. A large section of PCE members were based in France, where a major party organization was set up. During the later half of the Franco years, PCE changed its strategy and started organizing Workers' Commissions (CC.OO.) within the official trade union apparatus. CC.OO. and PCE gained strength and became the backbone of the opposition forces in the country.
Dolores Ibárruri, "La Pasionaria", a dedicated follower of consequent Comintern policies, replaced Jose Diaz as General Secretary in 1944, and held the position until 1960. Santiago Carrillo was General Secretary from 1960 to 1982. In 1963, after the Communist Party of Spain abandoned the armed struggle, hard-line Communists, led by Julio Álvarez del Vayo, founded the Spanish National Liberation Front (FELN), a small splinter group.[24]
Carrillo put the party on a
Communists played a fundamental role in the 1962 miners' strike, the first large-scale social movement since the end of the civil war, by putting their informal networks at its service, but also by involving their exiled activists to organize international solidarity. At the peak of the mobilization, more than 60,000 workers stopped work. A first breach in the edifice of Franco's dictatorship, which had ruled the country for more than twenty years.
Transition to democracy
The Party was legalized after the January
In the first elections after the transition in 1977, the PCE obtained 9% of the votes, and in 1979 it increased its vote share to 11%. By this time, however, the party had become increasingly divided into three currents.[25] Carrillo's supporters were squeezed between, on the one hand, pro-soviet communists who had remained within the party and felt his Eurocommunist course took the party too far on a social democratic path and, on the other hand, "renovators" who advocated for democratizing the party and opening it up towards more collaboration with other groups on the left. In the midst of successive waves of expulsions of members who belonged to the minority currents, the PCE suffered an electoral defeat in 1982, getting just 4% of the vote.
Divisions in the party, collaboration with other groups in the United Left
After the 1982 elections, Carrillo was removed as general secretary, and the new party leader
Despite its role in the anti-NATO protests of 1986, IU fared weakly in the 1986 elections, and by 1988, the Communist Party elected Julio Anguita as new General Secretary, which he remained until 1998. Under Anguita, the party took a turn towards the left and fundamental opposition to both PSOE and PP, and many of the members who had previously been expelled for pro-Soviet views returned to the party. By 1991, the party had 70,000 members, and IU rebounded in the 1989 elections, winning 9.1% of the vote that year and slightly increasing it to 9.6% in 1993 and 10.5% in 1996.
Notably, PSUC, the Catalan referent of PCE, did not reverse its eurocommunist course in the late 1980s, as the PCE had done, and gradually, PSUC and PCE grew apart. Finally, PSUC decided to dissolve itself into
After Anguita's retirement, and succession by Francisco Frutos, the PCE again modified its course. Frutos led IU into the election of 2000, after signing an electoral pact with PSOE, only to see the IU vote halved to 4%. He was then himself defeated when running to become the new IU coordinator by Gaspar Llamazares, who pursued a course of further rapprochement with PSOE. Tensions within IU grew when Llamazares was re-elected as IU coordinator in 2004 with a plurality of the vote against the candidate who was supported by the PCE leadership, Enrique Santiago. He again defeated a PCE candidate in an IU leadership primary in 2007. The alliance suffered more disappointing election results (4-5% in 2004 and 2008). By 2009, PCE membership was down to 20,000.
After the 2008 election, Llamazares resigned as IU coordinator, and later that year, PCE politician Cayo Lara was elected to replace him on the platform "For an anti-capitalist, republican, federal, and alternative United Left". IU shifted back towards a more confrontational attitude towards the PSOE, and
List of secretaries-general
Year | Name | Time in office |
---|---|---|
1921 | Antonio García Quejido | 1921–1923 |
1923 | César Rodríguez González | 1923–1925 |
1925 | José Bullejos | 1925–1932 |
1932 | José Díaz | 1932–1942 |
1942 | Dolores Ibárruri | 1942–1960 |
1960 | Santiago Carrillo | 1960–1982 |
1982 | Gerardo Iglesias | 1982–1988 |
1988 | Julio Anguita | 1988–1998 |
1998 | Francisco Frutos | 1998–2009 |
2009 | José Luis Centella | 2009–2017 |
2017 | Vacant (Provisional Committee) | 2017–2018 |
2018 | Enrique Santiago | 2018–present |
Federations of the PCE
The PCE consists of 15 federations:
- Communist Party of Andalusia
- Communist Party of Aragon
- Communist Party of Asturias
- Communist Party of the Balearic Islands
- Communist Party of the Canaries
- Communist Party of Cantabria
- Communist Party of Castile-La Mancha
- Communist Party of Castile-León
- Communist Party of the Basque Country
- Communist Party of Extremadura
- Communist Party of Galicia
- Communist Party of Madrid
- Communist Party of the Region of Murcia
- Communist Party of La Rioja
- Communist Party of the Valencian Country
Electoral performance
Second Spanish Republic
Election | Popular vote | Seats | Leader | Outcome | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Votes | % | # | ||||
1931 | 0.8 | #21 | 0 / 470
|
José Bullejos | DLR–PSOE–PRR–PRS–AR–FRG–PCR coalition | |
1933 | 1.9 | #14 | 1 / 472
|
José Díaz Ramos
|
PRR–PA–GRI–PRLD–PRG coalition | |
1936 | 2.5 | #13 | 17 / 473
|
IR–UR coalition |
Cortes Generales
Election | Popular vote | Seats | Leader | Outcome | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Votes | % | # | Congress
|
Senate | |||
1977 | 1,709,890 | 9.3 | #3 | 20 / 350
|
5 / 207
|
Santiago Carrillo | UCD minority |
1979 | 1,938,487 | 10.8 | #3 | 23 / 350
|
1 / 208
|
UCD minority | |
1982 | 865,272 | 4.1 | #4 | 4 / 350
|
0 / 208
|
PSOE majority |
See also
- Valentín González
- Juan Modesto
- Jorge Semprún
- Marcelino Camacho
- Antifascist Worker and Peasant Militias (MAOC)
Footnotes
- ^ "Enrique Santiago, elegido nuevo secretario general del PCE". ElDiario.es (in Spanish). 8 April 2018. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
- ^ "El Referente". elreferente.es. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 18 April 2012.
- ^ "La militancia del PCE se reduce a 7.713 afiliados a las puertas del XXI Congreso". 6 June 2022.
- ^ ISBN 9780878554645.
- ^ a b "El PCE recupera el leninismo al cumplirse el centenario de la Revolución de Octubre". cuartopoder. 3 December 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). pce.es. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 April 2017. Retrieved 22 February 2022.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ "Spanish communists demonstrate for a third republic on 90th anniversary of the second". morningstaronline.co.uk. Morning Star. April 2021.
- ^ "Julio Anguita llama a la refundación de Izquierda Unida". El País (in Spanish). El Pais. 22 April 2008.
- OCLC 440296586.
- OCLC 979230456.
- OCLC 246186751.
- ^ Teruel, Juan (2018). "From stability to change? The evolution of the party system in Spain". Academia. Retrieved 8 November 2023.
- ^ Fischer, Ivan (13 May 2021). "Spain's delivers employee status to food delivery riders". Brussels Morning. Retrieved 8 November 2023.
- ISBN 9781000062588.
- ISBN 9781351377645.
- ^ "Ley de 1 de marzo de 1940, sobre represión de la masonería y del comunismo". Articles 1 and 2, Act of 1 March 1940 (PDF) (in Spanish). p. 1. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
- ^ "Santiago Carrillo, el alma de la transición española" (in Spanish). ABC. 18 September 2012.
- ^ a b Estatutos del Partido Comunista de España (PDF) (in Spanish), Communist Party of Spain, 30 January 2014, p. 1, archived from the original (PDF) on 28 April 2017, retrieved 16 January 2018
- ^ a b S.G. Payne,The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004; pg. 12.
- ^ a b Payne,The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism, pg. 15.
- ^ Payne,The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism, pp. 18–19.
- ^ Payne,The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism, pg. 19.
- ^ Payne,The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism, pp. 20–21.
- ^ Biografias y Vidas – Julio Álvarez del Vayo Archived 2012-02-13 at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 978-0-81085-849-7. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
- ^ García, Rocío (June 1986). "Apoyar a IU supone enterrar el comunismo, declara Carrillo". EL PAÍS. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
- .
Further reading
- Tim Rees, "The Highpoint of Comintern Influence? The Communist Party and the Civil War in Spain," in Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe (eds.), International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–43. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
External links
- Official website (in Spanish)