All photos via the PCP
This past weekend the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) held its iconic Avante! festival under increasingly difficult circumstances. It was a resounding success.
The festival is an event filled with culture, music, art and Communist politics. This marks its 46th year.
From the speech of Jerónimo de Sousa, General Secretary of the PCP:
Warm greetings to all of you, to all the builders, participants and visitors of the Avante! Festival. A Festival of a prestigious newspaper, central organ of the Portuguese Communist Party!
An unparalleled Festival built with the work and art of a great militant collective!
A special greeting to the youth and to the JCP who, both in terms of construction and participation, are proof of a Festival filled with future. A Festival that holds a dream that we will pursue: that the project of the Portugal we are fighting for will one day have much of the beauty, solidarity and harmony of our Avante! Festival.
We also greet the artists who, with very different viewpoints, here brought their art in the multifaceted cultural dimensions, here they exercised their professional activity, here they gave expression once again to the freedom that the Portuguese people conquered with the 25th. of April, a greeting extended to the athletes, the technicians, to all the other participants in the vast programme of the Festival.
Here we are, with an ever new and renewed edition of the Festival that, once again, has been a huge success despite repeated campaigns of manipulation and lies, pressures and despicable blackmail.
Here we are, in this space of affirmation of the values of fraternity, peace, internationalist solidarity, democracy and socialism.
Here we are and here were thousands and thousands of participants in this incomparable and multifaceted Festival – the largest political and cultural event in the country.
Here we are, with our friends from all continents that we welcome from here, the communist parties and other progressive and anti-imperialist forces that honour us with their presence.
Here we are and here is this Portuguese Communist Party, ready and determined to continue the struggle in defence of the interests of workers, of our people, of the country, and in solidarity with the struggle of workers and peoples from all over the world.
A world in which capitalism confirms and reveals its contradictions, its exploitative, oppressive, aggressive and predatory nature, its structural crisis. This not only shows the inability of this system to respond to the main problems of humanity, but also shows that it is both a cause and factor of their worsening, which is reflected in the ever greater exploitation, inequalities and injustices, in the attack on democracy, in environmental degradation.
A world where the heightening of imperialism's aggressiveness brings new dangers, with increasing outbreaks of conflicts and an accelerating arms race, with the sharpening of the crisis and the relative decline of the main imperialist powers, namely the USA, in the face of the development of a vast process of realignment of forces at the international level.
This is obvious in the manoeuvres and provocations that are increasingly taking place against China, in the step-by-step siege of Russia, as well as in the actions of interference and aggression by imperialism against so many other countries...
The National Conference “Taking the initiative, strengthening the Party, answering the new demands” is here and from here we call on everyone to participate with their contribution in the debate that will follow.
Yes, with everyone's contribution, we are going to give a confident perspective of the future to our struggle and to the struggle of the workers and our people, for a better life and for the development of the country.
Yes, let us at the same time work to ensure the tasks of strengthening the Party organisation! We do not surrender, we do not conform and we do not give up!
We want a more developed and fairer country, a Portugal with a future. We will build it!
We know what we are and what we want to be: we are and we want to be the Portuguese Communist Party, with its history, its struggle, its identity, its project for the future.
We affirm its class nature as the Party of the working class and of all workers, the one that best upholds the interests and aspirations of all anti-monopoly classes and strata. We stress its supreme goal of building a new socialist and communist society, free from exploitation and oppression.
We are a Party with an unmistakable identity, the reason for its existence, its strength and its irreplaceable role. Always with the workers and the people, always with national sovereignty and independence, always with internationalist principles, we are and will be the Portuguese Communist Party - the Party to which we are proud to belong!
Long live the Avante Festival!
Long live Internationalist Solidarity!
Long live the JCP and the Youth!
Long live the PCP!
Full speech: Solidnet | Portuguese CP, Speech by Jerónimo de Sousa, General Secretary, Rally of the Avante! Festival
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