Santiago Carrillo
Santiago Carrillo Solares (born January 18, 1915 in Gijón , Asturias , Spain , † September 18, 2012 in Madrid ) was a Spanish politician. He was General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain ( PCE ) from 1960 to 1982.
Carrillo was born the son of the prominent Socialist MP Wenceslao Carrillo (1889–1963). At the age of thirteen he was already a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party ( PSOE ). He took part in the unification of the Socialist and Communist Youth Associations in 1934 to form the United Socialist Youth and became its first chairman.
In 2008 he published his autobiography, which bears the title Memorias - El testimonio polémico de un protagonista relevant de nuestra transición , in German for example The polemical confession of an important actor in the transition to democracy .
Youth in Republican Spain and Civil War
Carrillo worked as a committed politician, typesetter and journalist for the newspaper El Socialista . He also became a member of the Juventud Socialista in the late 1920s. In 1934 he became its general secretary. He took part in the revolutionary uprisings in Asturias in October 1934 and was imprisoned for it until 1936. In 1936 he became a member of the PCE , and in 1937 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He took part in the Spanish Civil War as an officer and political commissar, headed the junta for the defense of Madrid against the troops of General Francisco Franco from November 1936 to January 1937 and followed a decidedly pro-Soviet course.
After his election as general secretary of the PCE in 1960, the Franco regime accused the junta for the defense of Madrid, with a view to his work for public order, that Carrillo had executed 2,000 to 5,000 prisoners belonging to the Franco camp in Paracuellos de Jarama to answer for. Carrillo has always denied these allegations. This controversy remains the subject of debate to this day. The British historian Paul Preston , who wrote the first scientific biography of Carrillo, came to the conclusion that the order to liquidate the prisoners did not come from Carrillo, but from Moscow and the party leadership of the PCE. Carrillo, however, was a key figure in organizing the massacre.
exile
After the military collapse of the republic, he fled to Paris , where he belonged to the republican government in exile and tried to reorganize the party. Carrillo lived in exile for 38 years , mostly in France , but also in the USSR and South America. From 1942 he was involved in building an illegal secret organization of the party in Spain.
In 1960 he became Secretary General of the PCE as the successor to Dolores Ibárruri (la Pasionaria), who was also elected chairman and thus nominally led the PCE. Carrillo strengthened the party's underground position in the working class and among the intellectuals and made several attempts to replace him, now with the Marxist-Leninist and the Stalinist, now the pro-democracy currents. After the crackdown on the “ Prague Spring ” in 1968 by the Warsaw Pact armies , Carrillo began to distance his party from the CPSU. At the party congress in Rome in 1976, he advocated a "pluralistic competition" between the parties.
return
He secretly returned to Spain in 1976 after the death of the dictator General Francisco Franco and was arrested by the police, but released after a short time. During the negotiations on the restoration of democracy in Spain with Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez , the PCE demanded recognition of the monarchy . At the first internationally acclaimed party conference, Carrillo had a photo of King Juan Carlos I hung in the background and thus achieved her re-approval as a party on April 9, 1977. Carrillo became a member of the Committee of Nines of the Democratic Opposition, which worked out the political transition ( Transición ) .
Eurocommunism
Together with Georges Marchais in France and Enrico Berlinguer in Italy , he developed Eurocommunism at a meeting on March 2, 1977 . In his book, published in 1977, Carrillo defines Eurocommunism as a movement for a pluralistic socialist society with individual and collective freedom based on "democratic centralism". The achievements of the labor movement, such as "independent trade unions" and "right to strike" are described by Eurocommunism as integral elements of socialism, while Marxism-Leninism only recognizes the unions as a transmission belt for the world revolution led by the party. In April 1978 at the PCE congress, he deleted the terms “Marxism-Leninism” from the party's program and rejected Leninism as dogmatic. Together with Berlinguer, he criticized the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1980 and rejected General Wojciech Jaruzelski's coup in Poland as a failure of the attempt to export the Moscow model of society.
Political Practice
More openly than the majority of his comrades, Carrillo successfully developed important activities for the transition to democracy in Spain, for the combative defense of parliamentary democracy .
Carrillo was elected MP in the first democratic elections to the Congress of Deputies , the Spanish lower house, in Madrid in 1977, shortly after the PCE was legalized . In 1979 and 1982 he was re-elected as a Member of Parliament. But because of his party's failure in this election (the number of parliamentary seats fell from 23 in 1979 to 4 in 1982), he was forced to resign from the post of Secretary General on November 6, 1982. His successor and former follower, the much younger Gerardo Iglesias from the wing of the “innovators”, had a dispute with him from the start.
Exclusion from the PCE
On April 15, 1985, Carrillo and his political friends were expelled from the PCE. The following year, 1986, they founded their own party, which they called the Spanish Workers' Party - Communist Unity (PTE-UC). This tiny left party was unable to attract voters. Therefore, on October 27, 1991, Carrillo pleaded for its dissolution. The PTE-UC later merged with the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), but Carrillo turned down PSOE membership, remembering his many years as a communist.
Works in German translation
- "Revolution if Franco continues to kill". Spiegel interview with the Spanish Communist Party leader Santiago Carillo. In: Der Spiegel , No. 41/1975, p. 117.
- With Régis Debray and Max Gallo , Spain to Franco. VSA, West Berlin 1975. ISBN 3-87975-051-3
- “I only go to Moscow when I want to”. Spain’s Communist Party leader Santiago Carillo on the democratization of Spain and its past. In: Der Spiegel , No. 5/1977, pp. 83–86.
- Eurocommunism and the state. VSA, Hamburg 1977. ISBN 3-87975-118-8
- "The Eastern Bloc must change". Santiago Carillo answers Leszek Kolakowski's Essay on Spiegel. In: Der Spiegel , No. 21/1977, pp. 169–175.
- “We don't want a civil war”. Spiegel interview with the former General Secretary of the CP of Spain, Santiago Carillo. In: Der Spiegel , No. 19/1985, pp. 125f.
literature
- Paul Preston : The last Stalinist. The life of Santiago Carrillo, William Collins, London 2014, ISBN 9780007558407 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Santiago Carrillo in the catalog of the German National Library
- Santiago Carrillo in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Santiago Carillo - the butcher of the Spanish Revolution
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Carrillo, Santiago |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Carrillo Solares, Santiago |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Spanish politician, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 18, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gijón , Asturias, Spain |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 18, 2012 |
| Place of death | Madrid |