Álvaro Barreirinhas Cunhal, (born Sé Nova, Coimbra, 15h45, 10 November 1913), is a Portuguese politician, secretary-general of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) from 1961 to 1992.

Cunhal was the third child of Avelino Henriques da Costa Cunhal and Mercedes Barreirinhas. His father was a lawyer in Coimbra and Seia , and later on in Lisbon. He also studied Law at the University of Lisbon, where he joined the PCP, then an illegal organization, in 1931.

Cunhal visited the USSR for the first time in 1935 to attend the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in Moscow. He joined the Central Committee of the PCP for the first time in 1936 at the age of 22. His first arrest occurred in 1937.

While in jail, he submitted his final thesis on the topic abortion and obtained his Law degree (the jury included Marcelo Caetano). He then taught for some months at Colégio Moderno, in Lisbon. Among his pupils was the future Portuguese President Mário Soares.

From 1941 to 1949 Cunhal was underground and became de facto the leader of the PCP. Arrested in 1949, he remained in jail until he made a spectacular escape from Peniche's prison in 1960. This escape had a wide impact. The fascist government hurt in its own pride claimed that a soviet submarine was near the Peniche coast waiting for Cunhal.

In 1961, he was elected secretary-general of the PCP, the first one after Bento Gonçalves ' (the former leader) death in the concentration camp of Tarrafal in Cape Verde. Cunhal lived in exile in Moscow and Paris until the Carnation Revolution in 1974.

Back in Portugal, he led the PCP through the revolution, was minister without portfolio in several of the provisional governments which followed the revolution, and was sucessively elected for Parliament in all elections until 1987, although he never occupied the place.

Always more a Brezhnevite, Cunhal never supported Gorbachev's perestroika. He supported the 1991 attempted coup in the USSR.

Cunhal left his office in 1992, being succeded by Carlos Carvalhas. His voice however remained important in the following years, and has consistently sided with the most orthodox wing of the PCP.

Manuel Tiago

Cunhal is also a fiction writer, with several novels under the pseudonym Manuel Tiago, which he recognized as his own only in 1995. He also made the drawings for the original edition of Soeiro Pereira Gomes' book Esteiros.

• Até Amanhã, Camaradas
• Cinco Dias, Cinco Noites

(made into a film in 1996 by José Fonseca e Costa )

• A Estrela de Seis Pontas
• A Casa de Eulália

Further reading

José Pacheco Pereira, Álvaro Cunhal - Uma biografia política, Temas & debates, Lisbon, 1999, ISBN: 972-759-150-7