Alvaro Cunhal, the hard-line Portuguese Communist who led his party to the brink of power after the 1974 bloodless revolution, died on Monday aged 91, the Portuguese Communist Party announced. Often dubbed the last of the Stalinists, Cunhal never wavered in his rigid views even when communist parties across western Europe shed their revolutionary rhetoric in the 1980s and 1990s.
Cunhal was "a man of true uprightness, a selfless militant of the Communist Party and a great opponent of fascism who has to be admired," former President Mario Soares, Cunhal's rival for power after the 1974 "carnation revolution", told TSF radio.
Cunhal was PCP secretary-general from 1961 to 1992 and, a striking figure with his hawk-like features, bushy eyebrows and shock of white hair, remained a key presence in the party even after giving up its leadership.
An intensely private man who suffered ill-health in his later years, he rarely gave interviews and much of his personal life remains a mystery. But his political convictions never wavered, and in 2000 he defiantly defended his beliefs at a party congress - to the dismay of some members who had wanted to use the occasion to launch reforms.
"Our Communist convictions rest on objective reality that some would like to deny or forget - the division of society in classes and the class struggle," Cunhal, who was too ill to attend in person, said in a speech read to the congress.
"These are not just ideas. They are reality," he proclaimed, receiving a standing ovation from the party faithful.
Born into a middle-class family in the university city of Coimbra, Cunhal called himself "an adopted son of the proletariat".
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