Comrades,
We are holding our XXII Congress in the same year that we celebrate the 50th. anniversary of the 25 April Revolution.
This unique Portuguese revolution that the workers, the popular masses, the MFA (Armed Forces Movement) soldiers, our people, the democrats and anti-fascists built with their valiant collective action. This Portuguese Revolution, because it was born here and developed here with its eyes set on our own reality, in order to profoundly transform it and respond to the deepest aspirations of our people.
This Revolution that came after a long path of struggle, in which the PCP is unceasingly present, as the great force of Resistance against fascism - the great force that pointed the way towards victory and with it opening the doors to a future of freedom, social emancipation and national independence.
A de facto Revolution, with significant structural changes in the economic, social and civilisational fields that the workers and the popular masses aspired to and took as their own, in the fields of latifundia with the Agrarian Reform, in the cities and industrial belts with the nationalisations of the banks and strategic sectors of the economy, in the broad struggles they waged to improve living and working conditions, against inequalities and for the affirmation of the principles of equality.
Transformations and achievements that meant the liquidation of the power of the monopolies and latifundia and that put Portugal on the road to socialism.
A Revolution that broke with the colonial past, putting an end to the war and recognising the right of the peoples of the colonies to independence.
It was this liberating and emancipating Revolution that we celebrated this year, 2024, throughout the country, with the workers and our people, in our own countless commemorative initiatives, under the slogan “April is more future”, but also present and with active militancy in the thousands of initiatives of a popular and institutional nature, in that boundless April that filled squares, avenues and streets and with an indelible dimension in the heart of the cities of Lisbon and Porto - affirming its values and relevance.
Thousands of initiatives were held in schools, by cultural and recreational communities, trade unions and other structures of the grassroots movement and other social movements, institutions linked to theatre and cinema, but also the hundreds promoted by the Local Administration.
Of particular note was the commitment and initiative of the Party's organisations and the participation of many, many PCP militants in various debates, popular commemorative committees and in helping drive the work of the various unitary structures.
These commemorations were a memorable response to those who do everything they can and invest a great deal to erase the profound significance of this date and this founding period of the democratic regime.
Popular commemorations of remarkable significance because of the confidence they project in opening up space for the struggle to regain the paths of a fairer and solidary society, in these times when the most revanchist faction of the counter-revolution currently in power - the AD coalition - aspires, with the support of and in collusion with Chega and IL, to relaunch with renewed vigour its anti-April offensive of years and years, to destroy what remains of the Revolution and to push to the point of absurdity the ruinous and anti-national process of privatising everything that is fundamental to the development of the Country and the well-being of the people.
Those who counted yesterday and still count today with the complacency of those who call themselves left-wing, the same ones who, in co-authorship and in turn, led the 48-year process of right-wing policies and monopolist restoration, in clash with the Constitution of the Republic, to serve capitalist accumulation.
The recent reactionary initiatives regarding the 25th. November are part of the operation to deny April and aim to legitimise the continued attack on its achievements.
This operation is complemented by an ideological offensive with broader objectives, of promoting capitalism as the ideal society and the end of history.
The dangers are great, but the fight needed to contain and reverse the offensive can and must be waged successfully. The grandiose April celebrations have shown that there are plenty of forces that we need to harness.
We cannot let up in the fight against the ideological offensive, particularly the attempts to redefine the memory of the fascist dictatorship, which the dominant powers whitewash, and the rewriting of the history of the Revolution, which they demonise in order to deny it a future.
To contain and reverse the offensive requires a firm fight against right-wing policies and permanent action in defence of the interests of the people and the Country. It requires intensifying the mass struggle, strengthening the unity and convergence of democrats and patriots and the influence of the PCP.
It is with the conviction that the materialisation of April's values is an objective necessity for a Portugal of progress that we continue to affirm that April will win!
