Porto, Portugal – On the 52nd anniversary of Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution, thousands of people marched on April 25 to pay homage to those who fought against the country’s 40-year right-wing dictatorship and to vow to continue the struggle for fundamental change in Portugal. The march began outside the location of the Portuguese secret police’s prison during the dictatorship.

April 25 is officially commemorated as “Freedom Day” (Dia da Liberdade) in Portugal. On that date in 1974, lower-ranking military officials, fed up with Portugal’s bloody wars against the growing national liberation movements in Portugal’s African colonies, rebelled against the government. Thousands of people flooded into the streets greeting the rebelling officers with carnations. The hated regime quickly fell.

This ushered in a two-year period of mass workers’ and people’s mobilization as workers took control of many workplaces and communities. The Communist Party, which had been banned and severely repressed under the Salazar dictatorship, played a key role in navigating toward the creation of a new progressive constitution. After more than 40 years with almost no democratic rights, the 1976 constitution guaranteed workers’ rights, including the right to unionize and strike, created a national health care system, committed to gender equality and outlawing racial discrimination, proclaimed the goals of land reform, nationalizing means of production, and moving toward socialism. In the 50 years since then, the right wing has chipped away at many of these gains and blocked the larger goals, and their attacks have accelerated in recent years.

The far-right party in Portugal, Chega, openly praises the dictatorship era, whitewashes Portugal’s colonial history, and echoes Trump’s racist attacks on immigrants.

In this context the large turnout on April 25 was a strong rebuke to attacks such as an anti-worker bill that right-wing parties are now pushing in parliament, as well as legislative attacks on the democratic rights of transgender people and immigrants.

Marchers chanted in Portuguese, “April 25 forever! Never again fascism!” and many marchers carried signs honoring the revolutionary spirit of April 1974 and expressing outrage at today’s far right and fascist political movements.

There were large contingents in the march from the Portuguese Communist Party and their youth group, Portuguese Communist Youth. There were numerous contingents from unions affiliated with the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP). There were also contingents of student organizations, women’s rights organizations, several left organizations, anti-fascist organizations and organizations fighting for LGBTQ rights, housing rights, anti-war organizations.

After the march, the Portuguese Communist Party posted on social media: “Once again, the people took to the streets to celebrate April with joy, conviction, and confidence in the future. Streets were full in Lisbon, Porto, and dozens of cities across the country, a powerful testament to popular participation on this April 25th. Amid carnations, slogans, and many generations united, it was affirmed that April lives on in the achievements attained and in the determination to defend and deepen them.”

The PCP also encouraged people to mobilize on May 1, International Workers Day.

#International #Portugal #PCP

Lisbon, Portugal – In a spirited rally March 6, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) kicked off a series of events around the country to celebrate the 105th anniversary of the party’s founding. The rally highlighted the party’s accomplishments throughout its history as well as the party’s role in today’s ongoing struggles.

In a statement, the PCP said, “On March 6th, 1921, 105 years ago, a group of young workers formed a political party in Portugal. Trade unionists, active in the struggle of the early 20th century, encouraged by the gains following the October Revolution, felt the need for a party that would give political expression to their class struggle. That party is called the Portuguese Communist Party. Since then, the PCP has fought for the emancipation of workers, for the people and for the country. There has been no progress in the history of these 105 years in which Portuguese communists have not been involved. This was the case in the resistance and overthrow of fascism, in the achievements of the April Revolution, in the struggle in defense of rights, freedoms, national sovereignty and peace.”

PCP General Secretary Paulo Raimundo spoke at the March 6 event, saying, “With the same joy as always, with the enthusiasm of youth, with the wisdom of the people and above all, with the decisive strength of the working class and the workers, here we are, 105 years later, with the same profound conviction that there is no ideal more beautiful, more just and more necessary than ours.”

The PCP continues to play a key role in working class and internationalist struggles in Portugal. This includes playing a leading role in the union movement like in the nationwide general strike in December 2025 to oppose an anti-union and anti-worker “labor package” that Portugal’s right-wing parties are trying to push through. The PCP stands for defending democratic rights and public services that are under attack such as health care, education and social security, and opposing privatizations.

It includes organizing mass anti-war demonstrations, standing firmly against NATO, and standing in unwavering solidarity with countries and peoples under attack by U.S. and Western imperialism, from Venezuela to Palestine to Cuba to Iran. And it includes resolutely opposing attacks on immigrant workers by Portugal’s far right party, Chega, which are similar to Trump’s racist attacks on immigrants in the U.S.

More commemorative rallies and events are planned throughout Portugal in the coming weeks to mark 105 years of the Portuguese Communist Party.

#International #Portugal #PCP

Porto, Portugal – At an event in Porto on July 4 attended by around 200 people, leaders of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) firmly condemned the privatization of a key state energy company, Efacec, to a German shareholder. Mutares, the German shareholder, submitted a bid to acquire a 71% ownership of the currently nationalized company that specializes in transformers, appliances and equipment, automation solutions and electric mobility.

The Communist Party leaders who spoke at the event said that this new privatization would deepen the process of deindustrialization and have a serious impact on the country's financial situation, negatively impacting the working class.

Paulo Raimundo, general secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party, spoke at the event in Porto, condemning the privatization and announcing actions the Communist Party will take to try to stop it. One action he said the party will take is that its members who are elected to the Assembly of the Republic will present a resolution there to try to block the imminent privatization.

Privatization and other harms inflicted on the Portuguese economy by multinational capital have resulted in one in five people leaving Portugal to work in richer countries – the highest emigration rate in the European Union.

#PortoPortugal #Porto #Portugal #EU #PCP #Europe

Porto, Portugal – Around 100 people gathered in the northern Portuguese city of Porto to show solidarity with the Cuban revolution. They came together at the People's University of Porto (Universidade Popular de Porto, UPP) to demand an end to the U.S. blockade of Cuba.

The United States government imposed a blockade to strangle the Cuban economy soon after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

Ilda Figueiredo, representing the Portuguese Cuban Solidarity Association, gave a sharp message condemning the oppression that Cubans face on a daily basis due to the U.S. blockade.

Claudia Amador González, ambassador of Cuba in Portugal joined the meeting via video conference to express, “the importance of international solidarity with Cuba, and that every effort done in favor of Cuba is very important, since we need to fight the blockade from everywhere.”

The participants chanted “Cuba vencerá!” (Cuba will win) to demonstrate that the Cuban revolution isn't isolated or forgotten internationally, and that the Cuban socialist system is seen as a great hope for humanity.

At the end of the meeting all the participants committed to continuing the fight and to coming together in solidarity with Cuba.

#PortoPortugal #Porto #Cuba #PeoplesStruggles #Portugal #Europe

Lisbon, Portugal – Thousands of Portuguese workers marched July 7 to condemn inflation and stagnant wages.

People traveled from across the country to gather in Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal. Many traveled by train from Porto, the biggest city in the northern region of Portugal, where the train departed from Campanhã Train Station with around 800 protesters aboard.

The thousands converged on Marqués de Pombal Park in Lisbon then marched to the Portuguese parliament. They demanded a 35-hour work week without salary reduction, a minimum salary of €850 (around $865), an end to employment insecurity, and permanent work contracts to avoid financial instability. They also demanded pension adjustments to keep up with the rising cost of food and housing.

Many call center workers joined the protest to speak out against their job insecurity, inflation and stagnant wages.

The protesters chanted, “A luta continúa,” which in Portuguese means “The struggle continues!”

The Confederação Geral de Trabalhadores Portugueses (General Confederation of Portuguese Workers – CGTP) organized this demonstration to strengthen the fight of the Portuguese people against neoliberalism and to stand up for union rights, for better working conditions and for increased investment in public services and social functions of the state.

Jerónimo de Sousa, General Secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party joined the protesters to express solidarity and commitment to the struggles of Portuguese workers.

In spite of the hot weather during the march, the protesters succeeded in expressing their disagreement with the growth of social injustice and disparity in the context of the COVID pandemic.

#LisbonPortugal #Lisbon #Europe #PeoplesStruggles #Portugal #ConfederaçãoGeralDeTrabalhadoresPortugueses #CGTP #PortugueseCommunistParty

For the last two years the mainstream media has been painting a picture of the economic crisis in the euro-zone as one of governments spending too much on social welfare programs, leading to large budget deficits and debt. This reflects a right-wing, free market view that crises of overproduction under capitalism are because of ‘too much government intervention’ in the economy. The poster-child for this story has been Greece, whose large government budget deficit of about 15% of Greek GDP (total production of goods and services) and large government debt (which went as high as 160% of Greek GDP), triggered the crisis in 2010. In response, the big capitalists and their politicians called for more and more austerity in the form of tax increases, spending cuts and reduction in workers’ pensions and employment protection.

But Spain, whose economy is much larger than Greece’s, and which actually has a higher unemployment rate than Greece, is now the new center of the crisis. Spain has just had to take a 100 billion euro ($125 billion) bailout of its banks by the euro-zone. But Spain actually had government budget surpluses during the last economic expansion (2001-2007) so that its tax revenues were greater than government spending. In contrast, Germany, which is often portrayed as being ‘thrifty,’ also had government budget deficits (albeit about half the size of Greece’s). Spain also had one of the lowest levels of total government debt before the last recession and still had a government debt level lower than Germany, until it took out the bank bailout loan.

What Greece and Spain (along with Portugal and Ireland which have also had to impose austerity in exchange for more loans), had in common is that they all had large inflows of capital from Germany and other northern European countries. When the recession (or in a growing number of countries, depression) and financial crisis that began in the U.S. hit, these capital flows dried up. Thus the current euro-zone crisis is very similar to the 1997 Asian economic crisis, which also resulted from a boom and then bust in capital flows and led to a severe crisis of overproduction that spread to Russia and Latin America.

These booms and bust caused by international flows of capital are not accidents; rather they are a fact of life under modern monopoly capitalism. About 100 years ago, the Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin pointed out that the concentration and centralization of capital led to a handful of huge corporations dominating industry after industry. Lenin called this monopoly capitalism to differentiate it from the more competitive capitalism of Marx’s time, where most capitalist firms were relatively small.

One of the features of monopoly capitalism pointed out by Lenin was that the export of capital, which is movement of money across borders, became more important than international trade, or the movement of goods and services between countries. Today capital flows, for both investment and speculative reasons, far exceed the value of trade. In 2010, world trade averaged about $75 billion per day. In contrast, the foreign exchange market, which trades money for trade, investment and speculation, averaged a whopping $4 trillion per day, or 50 times larger than the trade of goods and services.

While free market apologists for monopoly capitalism claim that these huge flows of speculative capital actually make capitalism more stable, the fact is that these flows can be the trigger for worldwide economic crises of overproduction. These huge international flows of capital go hand-in-hand with the growth of the financial sector, another characteristic of monopoly capitalism described by Lenin in his work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

Some countries with capitalist economies, such as Malaysia during the 1997 economic crisis, turned away from free-market fantasies and introduced controls on capital flows. While free-market economists predicted disaster, these controls actually helped Malaysia’s economy to weather the storm.

But while controls on capital, like other Keynesian government policies such as government deficit spending, can help reduce the damage of an economic crisis, they do not prevent such crises. The more that such controls help limit the damage of crises, the more the capitalists want to reduce the government’s role in the economy to free big corporations and big banks to make the most profits. This is the policy of deregulation, imposed by politicians bought and paid for by the 1% for the last 30 years.

Only with a socialist economy can a country distance itself from the global monopoly capitalist financial whirlpool that is leading to one economic disaster to another. A socialist economy is one where the production is for people’s needs and not for profit and ownership is not concentrated in the hands of the wealthy 1% but instead collectively owned by the people.

#Europe #CapitalismAndEconomy #Ireland #capitalistCrisis #Greece #monopolyCapitalism #Spain #Portugal