Release by the Political Committee of the PCP

1. At a time when one hundred years have passed since the Republican Revolution of 1910, PCP underlines the significance of the date as an important event in the long course of the Portuguese people for its liberation.
The victory of the Republican Revolution of 1910 put an end to an anachronistic and parasitic monarchy and carried out important advances in terms of fundamental liberties and rights, education and culture, secularization of the State and endowed the country with a Constitution advanced for its time, the Constitution of 1911.
PCP values all the democratic and progressive advances achieved and firmly fights the reactionary lines of attack that seek to justify the military coup of 1926, the instauration of fascism, and whitewashing of its crimes. It is not by chance that, under the banner of October 5th, there were important anti-fascist days of united struggle and resistance. But at the same time, PCP rejects the uncritical and idyllic visions of republicanism and the Republic that dominate the official commemorations of the centennial of the 1910 Revolution, while recognizing the limits of this revolution and of the regime it installed in the country.
It is in this framework that, throughout the year, PCP has marked this event with a varied group of initiatives pointed to the enlightenment of what occurred and what the revolution effectively represented; what historic circumstances determined the revolution; what problems and contradictions it sought to resolve and overcome; which social classes were committed to the revolution and which really benefited from the instauration of the Republic and the ensuing politics of power; what made possible the advance and victory of the more reactionary forces, only 16 years after those historic events of October 4th and 5th, namely the military coup that opened the doors to almost half a century of fascist dictatorship; and how the lessons and experiences of the republican revolution are projected today.

2. The 1910 revolution culminated in a wide movement of popular discontent and protest in which the republican ideal, with its promises of liberty and social justice, gathered a strong mobilization of masses and the overthrow of the Monarchy and the instauration of the Republic became the objective around which converged the aspirations of the liberal bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, the working class, the intermediary classes and the urban population.
Portugal was, at the turn of the 20th century, an economically backward country, essentially agrarian, with an incipient industry, a very high level of illiteracy, and a low living standard. In the fields, the big absentee landlords in the South coexisted with the predominance of very small property ownership in the Center and North of the country. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese sought through emigration, mainly to Brazil, what was denied to them in their country. A colonial country, Portugal was simultaneously a very dependent country, subject to foreign domination, mainly from England, factors that strangled its development. The degrading living conditions of the people – low wages, long work days, absence of social policies – outlined the decadence and parasitism of the monarchist regime and the need for its overthrow. The significant process of industrialization that took place during the last years of the Monarchy, with the increase in the number of factories in Lisbon, Oporto and other regions of the country, and the corresponding growth of the working class, were accompanied by the development of a social struggle and contributed to the creation of the conditions that made the triumph of the revolution possible.
Increasingly isolated and discredited, mostly after the shameful abdication that led to the revolt of January 31st of 1891, and incapable of facing the serious economic and social problems of the country, the Monarchy responded by repressing the developing worker's struggle and the republican opposition, which opted for conquering power by force of arms. With a decisive popular support, the Republic is proclaimed on October 4th in many municipalities of the Lisbon region and its Southern Margin, and on the 5th of October in the capital. Portugal became, to the honour of the Portuguese people, the third Republic of Europe.

3. The Republican Revolution of 1910 had a strong popular dimension, triumphed thanks to the participation of workers and populations of Lisbon and its Southern Margin, of Oporto and other urban centers, and raised high expectations of a better life. The initial period of the Republic was marked by an increase in popular initiatives and, in particular, by a rise of the worker's movement and the struggle for demands by workers from the cities and the fields of the South. But successive governments not only forgot the promises they had made but responded to the legitimate claims of workers with repression and a very violent attack upon the labour movement, arresting union leaders, closing down unions and worker newspapers, deporting thousands of activists. Rapidly entering in a collision course with the worker and union movement, the Republic alienated early on the popular support that was indispensable to consolidate the democratic regime and face the monarchist and fascist reaction, which, after several attempts, always frustrated by the decisive mobilization of the popular masses, managed to impose a military dictatorship only 16 years after the triumph of the revolution.

4. The Republican Revolution of 1910, in terms of its class nature, was a bourgeois democratic revolution which finished the tasks that the 1820 and 1834 liberal revolutions had not completed. With it, the feudal remnants were strongly struck, the nobility and the clergy lost their dominating position, which was transferred to the liberal bourgeoisie, important hurdles to capitalist development were removed, ignorance and obscurantism were fought, positive reforms concerning the family and women’s rights (although they were denied voting rights) were implemented, among others.
But unlike the April Revolution, which destroyed the monopolies and large estates and ended the colonial wars, the Republican Revolution was essentially a political revolution, “from above”, keeping practically intact the economic and social structures, pursuing a colonialist policy and of submission to imperialism. Portugal’s entry into World War I, which aroused the opposition of the workers and huge “hunger” demonstrations, fits into this framework of class politics foreign to the interests of the people and the country. This is why the PCP always stressed that the liquidation of fascism did not imply a “return” to the liberal bourgeois Republic installed in 1910, but a profound democratic and national revolution. This is why the PCP opposed and opposes any attempts, under the pretext of commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the Republican Revolution, to devalue or even wipe out the April Revolution and its high place in the History of Portugal, diminish and attack its values and achievements, as is now the case of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.

5. The scope of the Revolution of 1910 was conditioned from the start by the backwardness of the socio-economic structures, the small size of the working class, the strong influence of the anarchist petty-bourgeois ideology of the trade union movement, the absence of a revolutionary party of the proletariat.
With the founding of the Portuguese Communist Party, on March 6, 1921, a new stage in the Portuguese labour movement begins – the action of the working class as an autonomous social force. Created under the influence of the October Revolution and the context of a revolutionary influx in Europe, the PCP is the creation of the Portuguese working class, the development of its courageous struggle, the ripening of its class conscience. Making its way through great difficulties, and forced into hiding only five years after its creation, the PCP planted deep roots among the working masses, resisted the violence of repression, led powerful popular struggles, became the great force of Resistance, of the April Revolution, of the defence of its values and achievements. This is the historic truth. Attempts to promote the role of the republican bourgeoisie in the antifascist struggle and diminish the role of the working class and the PCP do not alter this reality.

6. The centenary of the Republican Revolution of 1910 takes place in a particularly serious situation at the national and international level, with the Portuguese workers and people facing the most violent attack against their rights and living conditions since the 25th. April [Revolution] and this is inseparable from the deep crisis, structural and systemic, faced by the capitalist system which drags with it the danger of a terrible civilizational regression.
Such a situation – the sole responsibility of the PS, PSD and CDS and their policies at the service of economic groups – makes it particularly serious that the instrumentalization, by the Government and the President of the Republic, of the official celebrations of the centenary of the Republic, namely in the case of June 10th. And as announced for October 5th., with the shameless operation of “opening hundred schools”, after imposing the closure of almost 4000, is a real insult to the memory of the positive measures of the Republic in the field of Public School.
An operation that cannot hide neither the profoundly negative course that the policies at the service of the economic groups are imposing on the country, nor the increasing dimension of the protest, the indignation and struggle of the workers and the Portuguese people claiming for deep changes.

The PCP, by its class nature and the place it holds in the history of the struggle of the Portuguese workers and people, is the heir to the most advanced and liberating principles of the Republican Revolution of 1910. In evoking this important event, the PCP does so, not facing back the past but the present and future of Portugal and the world, trying to draw experiences and lessons to give more strength and confidence to its struggle for a rupture with the right-wing policies that have ruined the country, for a patriotic and left-wing policy, in defence of the democratic regime enshrined in the Constitution, for social p