Communist Party of Spain

Communist Party of Spain (PCE), Spanish political party founded in 1921 by dissident members of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).

In April 1920 youth members of the PSOE split from the party, and the following year the PCE was formed when these former socialists united with the Spanish Communist Workers’ Party. The PCE’s first national meeting was held in 1922, but, repressed by Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, the party was forced to operate clandestinely. The PCE gained strength in the early 1930s. It captured 17 legislative seats in 1936, during the polarization of Spanish politics that preceded the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). With the outbreak of civil war, the PCE grew rapidly, expanding from fewer than 1,000 members in 1929 and some 30,000 in 1936 to nearly 1,000,000 in 1937. As part of the Republican front against General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces, the PCE became the best-organized, most tightly disciplined, and most militarily effective of all the parties in the Spanish Republic, and it received significant amounts of Soviet aid and assistance.

After Franco achieved victory in 1939, the PCE went underground, and many of its leaders went into exile. As an outlawed organization, the PCE continued resistance to Franco’s dictatorship—indeed, it was the only major internal opposition force in Spain. Throughout the 1940s and ’50s, the PCE conducted guerrilla operations against the government. Santiago Carrillo became the party’s secretary-general in 1956, and under his leadership the PCE adopted a moderate stance and continued its clandestine organization of a major Spanish labour federation.

In 1977, shortly after Franco’s death, the PCE was legalized. The party embraced Eurocommunism, pledging adherence to parliamentary democracy at home and independence from the Soviet Union. In Spain’s first democratic elections, the PCE attracted little support, and by 1986 it had split into several relatively small factions. Subsequently, the PCE joined the United Left (Izquierda Unida), a coalition of left-wing and ecologist parties. Although failing to attract wide support, the United Left did succeed in becoming Spain’s third largest national party.