The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online

XII (2006), no 19 53
Section V
New Publications - Reports and Reviews.
The political biography of Álvaro Cunhal in 3 volumes by José Pacheco
Pereira now concluded.
José Pacheco Pereira: Alvaro Cunhal, uma biografia política. Volume I: „Daniel“, o jovem
revolucionário (1913 - 1941), Lisbon, Temas e Debates, 1999. 477 p.; Volume II:
„Duarte“, o dirigente clandestino (1941 - 1949), Lisbon, Temas e Debates, 2001. 872 p.;
Volume III: O Prisioneiro (1949-1960), Lisbon, Temas e Debates, 2005. 748 p.
Introductory note by José Pacheco Pereira.
• Between March of 1949 and January 1960, Álvaro Cunhal was in prison. His everyday life
didn’t seem to have any apparent history, it was made of repetition of the same gestures, in
a succession of hours, days and years, serving his sentence in two high-security prisons: the
„Penitenciária“ and the Fortress of Peniche. What could be the content of his biography Half
a dozen of pages, would the reader say, looking with perplexity at several hundreds of pages
of this publication. But it does not seem to me that this should be the case.
• A „political biography“ of Álvaro Cunhal cannot only be made of the events directly linked
to the prisoner’s life, because the person described in the biography had - like only a few did
- associated his personal life with the history of Portuguese communism. In his adult life there
was not one sentence he wrote, not one drawing he made, not one act he was responsable
which would not have had the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) as the reference point. This
is why Cunhal is simply not understandable, even in the years of his greatest isolation,
without considering this all-embracing relationship with the party which he was a part of.
• It is impossible to write a biography of Cunhal without at the same time explaining the
history of the PCP, and, in a comprehensive way, the „oposição“ against the dictatorial
regime of Salazar. Consequently, the history of the PCP and the history of the oposição -
which are still in a large part to be written - represent a phenomenon of continuity, which -
as can be seen through what Cunhal did during and after the imprisonment - was his main
preoccupation and his motivation to live on. Without this history, Cunhal cannot be
„explained“ in his political biography. (Translated from Portuguese).
http://estudossobrecomunismo.weblog.com.pt/