Santiago Carrillo

Santiago Carrillo (born January 18, 1915, Gijón, Spain—died September 18, 2012, Madrid) was the secretary-general of the Communist Party of Spain from 1960 to 1982. He received wide publicity from his book Eurocomunismo y estado (1977; Eurocommunism and the State), which espoused the freedom and independence of national communist parties.

Carrillo was born in Asturias, and his father was Wenceslao Carrillo, a leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. His political involvement began through his membership in the Socialist Youth (Spanish: Juventadas Socialistas). Frustrated by the Socialists’ reformism and after visiting Moscow, Carrillo joined the Spanish Communist Party in November 1936. He was in charge of public order in Madrid, and some held him responsible for the massacre of prisoners at Paracuellos de Jarama and Torrejón de Ardoz in November of that year. After the Spanish Civil War he went to the Americas, and he later spent many years in Paris. He participated in the founding, in July 1974, of the Junta Democrática Española, which partially united the opposition to the regime of Francisco Franco, and in March 1977 he helped found the Coordinación Democrática, which incorporated the opposition parties and Spain’s regional autonomy movements.

After its legalization in 1977, the Spanish Communist Party maintained a low profile while winning votes and parliamentary seats. Carrillo cooperated in the drafting of Spain’s new constitution and supported the government in its attempts to cope with Spain’s economic difficulties and its efforts to overcome terrorism, particularly by ETA, the Basque separatist organization. He favoured working for “a plurality of political parties and for democratic alternation between the majority and the minority,” and he supported the Basque and Catalan sections of the Communist Party in their desire to take an independent stance based on the needs of their own regions. Because of discord within the party regarding his leadership, Carrillo resigned as secretary-general of the Spanish Communist Party in 1982 and later founded his own party, which had little electoral success.