Biography
Paulo Raimundo is 46 years old, married and has three children.
He is the son of workers who come from the municipality of Beja. He was born in Cascais, the municipality where his parents worked at the time, as employees of Estoril Football Club, where they stayed in the club’s facilities. He lived in Setúbal from the age of 3, where his parents settled and worked.
Paulo Raimundo attended the Faralhão Primary School, in the parish of Sado, in Setúbal, a school built during the April Revolution, in the dynamics of solidary and voluntary work of local workers and population. His childhood is defined by his life on the streets and by the river Sado. From a very young age, he accompanied his mother in the work she carried out in agriculture, cleaning and construction, and, for a certain period, he began in effect working with his mother, namely in shellfish gathering. He attended Tele School in the 5th.and 6th. grades and afterwards he attended the Ana de Castro Osório school, in Bela Vista, in Setúbal, where he studied the 7th., 8th. and 9th. grades, and had his first contact with student association dynamics, of organisation and struggle. He later entered the 10th. grade at the Bela Vista Secondary School, in a period when student dynamics in different expressions is very active and the political struggle is intense. He participated in slates for the Student Association elections, was a member of the Students Association and also of the Final Year committee of that school. He became a student worker and finished his 12th. grade, night schooling at D. Manuel Martins Secondary School, also in Setúbal.
The period when he studied and worked enabled contact with different work and social realities. He worked in carpentry, was a baker and cultural animator at Christian Youth Association (ACM) in Bela Vista. Realities that enabled him to feel the day-to-day contradictions, the reality of poorly paid work, exploitation and precariousness and, on the other hand, to have the experience of comradeship and solidarity among workers. The experience as a cultural animator with children from the Bela Vista neighbourhood was defining in his personal and political education. This is a period in which, simultaneously with his party intervention, he associates the participation in a group of young people with a cultural and recreational nature. He fulfilled the Compulsory Military Conscription, first in Vila Nova de Gaia and later in Porto.
He joined the Portuguese Communist Youth (JCP) in 1991. In 1995 he became a JCP official. He has been a Party member since 1994 and a Party official since 2004. He was a member of JCP’s National Leadership, Political Committee and Secretariat.
He was elected to the Municipal Assembly of Setúbal.
In 1996, at the XV Congress of the PCP, he was elected a member of the Central Committee. At the XVI Congress, in 2000, he was elected to the Political Committee of the Central Committee of the PCP. At the XVII Congress of the PCP, he was again elected to the Political Committee and assumed responsibility for the PCP's Braga Regional Organisation. At the XX Congress he was elected to the Secretariat of the Central Committee. During the XXI Congress he was elected to the Political Committee and the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the PCP.
Paulo Raimundo combines his own human qualities with a dense and diversified experience, political work in several areas of organisation and intervention with responsibilities for work with the youth and the JCP, integration and leadership of regional organisations, tasks in the trade union areas, monitoring of sectors and companies and public services, among many others. A life path dedicated to defending the interests of the Portuguese workers and people, for a Portugal with a future, for the communist ideal and project.
