Popular Democratic Union (Portugal)
The People's Democratic Union (Portuguese: União Democrática Popular or UDP) was a Portuguese communist party of maoist influence. The party is now transformed into a political association in its last congress in 2005 due to the merger with other left-wing parties in the Leftwing Bloc.
The party was originated after an alliance between the Committee of Support to the Imprisoned Revolutionaries (Portuguese: Comité de Apoio aos Revolucionários Presos or CARP) and the Revolutionary Communists Committee (Portuguese: Comité Comunistas Revolucionários or CCR) that was formed in order to run to the "bourgeois electoral process", the first free election in Portugal, in 1975. The party elected one MP in that election and also in the subsequent elections until 1983. After that it ran integrated in the electoral lists of the Portuguese Communist Party until 1991.
In 1998 it became part of the Leftwing Bloc after a merger with other small left-wing parties, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the Politics 21 and the Front of the Revolutionary Left.