Portuguese Communist Party Research Articles

On the 50 th anniversary of the Portuguese Revolution of April 25 1974

In 2024, the Portuguese people, and with them the entire democratic and progressive world, celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ‘Carnation Revolution’, the first and to date only social revolution in western Europe after the second world war. In its rising phase between 1974 and 1976, the Portuguese revolution implemented profound antimonopoly, anti-imperialist and even anti-capitalist transformations that radically changed the country’s economic structures and the living conditions of the Portuguese people. Its central goal was to achieve liberation from fascist rule and an end to colonial wars. This it achieved. But it was also an ‘unfinished revolution’ in terms of its wider goals of social transformation. The Portuguese revolution left deep imprints of achievements, experiences and values. These remain the basis of the Portuguese Communist Party’s current programme for an advanced democracy, a programme that the party proposes to the Portuguese people and that is an integral part of the socialist Portugal of the future.

Fascist Legacies of Mobilization and Co-Optation: Evidence from Democratic Portugal

Many authoritarian regimes seek to blunt everyday acts of resistance and social mobilization through co-optation rather than adopting riskier tools like outright repression. What are the political imprints of authoritarian-era co-optation after a transition to democracy? We examine this question in Portugal, where rural corporatist institutions known as Casas do Povo sought to co-opt peasants and dismantle worker mobilization in the fascist era. We find conditional effects for the consequences of rural co-optation in Portugal’s restive southern region, where Casas do Povo took on particular importance given ongoing social mobilization over exploitative labor conditions in the countryside. Absent robust co-optation, social mobilization in the fascist era translated into greater support for the left-wing Portuguese Communist Party after democratization and less support for the right. But the electoral legacies of social mobilization are absent where the fascist regime created early Casas do Povo, facilitating co-optation.

Between carceral family album and world memory

Susana de Sousa Dias’s cinematic reframing of mugshots from the archive of Portugal’s former political police, the PIDE, represented a unique intermedial contribution to the country’s memory boom of the 2000s and 2010s. In her 2017 documentary, Luz Obscura, three surviving children of Octávio Pato (1925–1999), an emblematic leader of the Portuguese Communist Party, narrate their traumatic memories of a clandestine childhood overshadowed by surveillance, ruptured family ties and imprisonment. The pathos of the narrators’ recollections is enhanced by the intercutting of repressive archival portraits and fragmented images of detained parents and children, which, as an ensemble, evokes a disturbing ‘family album’. In this article, I consider the extent to which Sousa Dias’s film encourages the viewer to empathize with the individualized pain of each narrator while simultaneously framing the ‘carceral’ family album as a trope for a recuperated anti-fascist memory and, ultimately, as a contribution to a Deleuzian ‘world memory’ of political resistance.

Border Crossings by Manuel [Álvaro Cunhal] Tiago

Reviewed by: Border Crossings by Manuel [Álvaro Cunhal] Tiago Debora Zamorano Tiago, Manuel [Álvaro Cunhal]. Border Crossings. International Publishers, 2021. Pp. 115. ISBN 9780717808731. Border Crossings is a captivating collection of fictional stories about illegal border crossings by members of the Portuguese Communist Party in the 1930s and 40s. The characters in these stories crossed European borders fleeing from a dictatorship. These escapes encompass political exiles, self-exiles, underground communists, political beliefs, and seeking a better life. The author’s name, Manuel Tiago, was a pseudonym used by Álvaro Cunhal, the historical leader of the Portuguese Communist Party from 1961 to 1992. Cunhal spent nearly 35 years underground or in prison for his role in building the Communists into the only well-organized opposition to the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar and then Marcelo Caetano. Ultimately, this would lead to a coup in 1974. On top of being the leader of the Portuguese Communist Party, Manuel Tiago was a writer and a plastic artist. He understood the role of art as serving a political goal. Therefore, his writings and art were mostly done in secret to not arise commotion toward his political agenda. Despite being fictional, these stories certainly reflect authentic struggles of idealist people risking their lives for their values. The descriptions are genuine, and they transport the reader into the characters’ minds, allowing us to feel their fears, difficulties, and moments of relief and happiness after their fortunate crossings. One of the highlights of the book is its description of human characteristics such as cooperation, helpfulness, unity, and care. The narratives allow the reader to feel warm-hearted about the number of people who volunteer to help the characters crossing the borders in their endeavors. Furthermore, Manuel Tiago enriches the stories by providing the reader with knowledge of different places, landscapes, oceans, political tourism as Eric Gordon, who has translated this book, points out in the foreword (ix). Manuel Tiago also gives specific and detailed information on one of the characters’ passports in the “When You Least Expect It” story. The passport had two stamps in different colors, with the same date and the same border, mistakenly superimposed as the author mentioned. In the story, an expert also fixed the mistake and explained what the character of the story had to do and how to proceed. Such information shows the reality of human mistakes even in carefully outlined plans. One of the strengths of the book is the use of language misunderstandings that often happen when people who speak different languages try to engage in conversations. For example, in the “Brazen Pursuit” story, Alberto, the main character asked a family on the train what region of France they were from after listening to their conversation. They responded that they were Swiss. The translation made by Eric Gordon stay true to the original work in this sense. It did not exclude all the human feelings expressed in the stories and is still able to captivate the readers, making them to want to see the narrow escapes of the characters in each story. Additionally, it gives an overview of the nuances of the stories. For example, it briefly describes the foreign cities of the stories, the discomforts of travel, and the unity between the characters and the people they encounter. The book ends with a chapter on questions to ponder and discuss. This chapter is particularly important to help the readers think of human decisions and actions in the stories and make sense of them. For example, the decision on risk assessment is mentioned as one of the most critical issues in underground work (113). The question is: what makes a person take voluntary risks, as Alfredo took when leading Barra out of Portugal in the “Lies to East” story. [End Page 482] The author also calls the readers’ attention to sexism in one of the stories. The handlers of the crossers were not pleased that they were women. This could be an allusion to Cunhal bringing consciousness to the gender issues he had witnessed. In fact, while in prison, Cunhal obtained his law degree, and his thesis was about abortion. While he saw abortions as tragedy, he argued that for...

Partager la chambre ibérique dans la « maison commune » ? Le Parti communiste portugais et le Parti communiste d’Espagne dans une Europe en mutation, 1985-1994

The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) evolved from divergence to convergence in the face of European integration between 1985 and 1994. Both parties started from opposite positions since the times of the struggle against the dictatorships of Salazar and Franco, when the PCP aligned itself with the Moscow orthodox line while the PCE opted for Eurocommunist heterodoxy. Gorbachev’s theses on the “common European house”, perestroika, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War forced the two Iberian communist parties to position themselves before vertiginous changes that also had their translation in European construction. The changes in the international relations, the form that European construction took with the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, and the anti-capitalist and third-world turn to the left that the PCE gave as of 1988 facilitated a convergence with the PCP that resulted in cooperation between both in the European Parliament. This article analyses the evolution of the ideological positions and the tactical decisions of two main Iberian communist parties through documents, press, speeches, statements, parliamentary debates of both organizations and, when possible, their historical archives.

The Portuguese Radical Left and Europe: The Case of the PCP

This paper takes a qualitative, rhetorical and historical approach with a view to analyzing the Portuguese Communist Party’s (PCP) long-term, oppositional stance and tactics towards European integration (EI) by briefly covering early opposition, while focusing on 1990s onward stages. The economic crises (Euro Crisis 2008/2009 and Pandemic) Portugal faces, and the rigid, neo-liberal solutions imposed by the European Union, have led the PCP to feel its constant criticisms of increased federalism have been justified. At its XXI Congress in 2020, the PCP used the same rhetorical arguments as it had in the past, including that the only solution is to break with the right’s pro-EU policies.

Political Readings of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Portugal

The 1956 Hungarian revolution had a resonant echo in Western Europe, gaining large attention and media coverage. This article explores how the small, peripheral Atlantic country of Portugal, on the other side of the European continent (Lisbon lies more than 3,000 kilometers from Budapest), which was under the rightwing conservative dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar’s New State at the time, became interested in the Hungarian events, allowing them to be written about in the most influential newspapers. The article begins with a discussion of the basic context of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and of the Portuguese political context in the mid-1950s (the Salazarist regime and the bulk of the oppositional forces) and then offers an analysis of articles found in seven important Portuguese newspapers. Essentially, it presents a survey of the coverage of the Hungarian Revolution in the Portuguese press and explores how those events were interpreted and how they had an impact on the ideological readings and positions of the government, the moderate opposition, and the radical opposition of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). The 1956 revolution merited extensive coverage in the Portuguese papers, with titles, pictures, and news boxes on the front pages sometimes continuing into the next pages of a given paper or on the last page. The stories were narrated, for most part, in a lively, fluid, sentimental, and apologetic language. The New State in particular, but also moderate publications which were oppositional to Salazar, endorsed the Budapest revolutionaries and criticized and denounced orthodox communism in the form of Soviet repression, either in the name of Christendom, national independence, and the Western European safeguard against communism (in the case of Salazarism), or in the name (and hope) of a democratic surge, which would usher in strident calls for civil liberties (in the case of oppositional voices). With the exception of the press organ which voiced the official position of the Portuguese Communist Party, supporting the Soviet response against the Hungarian insurgents (and thus was in sharp contrast with the larger share of public opinion), there was a rare convergence, despite nuances in the language, in the images, narratives, messages, and general tone of the articles in the various organs of the Portuguese press, which tended to show compassion and support for the insurgents in Budapest because their actions targeted communism and tended to decry the final bloody repression, which exposed the Soviet Union as a murderous regime.

The Roots of the Portuguese Communist Party. The Introduction of Marxist Ideas in Portugal and the Creation of the Portuguese Maximalist Federation

Este artículo está dividido en tres partes complementarias. En primer lugar, se realiza un análisis de la introducción y difusión de las ideas marxistas en Portugal para evaluar las dinámicas que llevaron a su territorialización política a través de la creación de la Federación Maximalista Portuguesa.¿ Cómo penetraron estas ideas en el espacio público y a través de qué mecanismos? ¿Se difundieron? En segundo lugar, se estudian los contenidos del periódico A Bandeira Vermelha para evaluar su papel en esta difusión y su importancia para el posterior proceso de establecimiento del Partido Comunista Português.¿Cuáles fueron las principales ideas difundidas por los maximalistas y cuál fue su impacto en la difusión del marxismo? Para finalizar, el artículo sitúa en perspectiva la importancia de los periódicos O Comunista y Avante! en la difusión de las ideas marxistas y su impacto en el complejo y largo proceso de bolshevización del PCP.

José Saramago: Rota de Vida. Uma Biografia by Joaquim Vieira

Reviews 106 pioneers in this field, deserve much credit for their courage and enterprise. They do not shy away from difficulties, and for the most part they are accurate. Yet their versions can read rather flatly, partly because they have a tendency to use the closest English equivalent of a Portuguese word or turn of phrase. Sometimes a slightly less respectful attitude to the original can pay off. Here is an example: ‘De casa, e das portas adentro tendes o exemplo de toda esta verdade’ is rendered ‘There are examples of all this truth from homes and indoors’. A freer translation seems justified, perhaps: ‘Your own private lives at home provide an example of this truth in its entirety’. The translators refer to Arnaldo do Espírito Santo’s critical edition of Vieira, still in progress, which has reached two of the sermons in the present volume. They might have made more use of the editor’s glossary and notes: ‘generoso’ is glossed as ‘noble’, not ‘generous’, and ‘com suas pensões’ has nothing to do with lodgings; as Espírito Santo explains in a note, the phrase means ‘à sua custa’ [at his expense]. But this reviewer’s quibbles are not to be taken too seriously. The translation is an important enterprise, and for the most part carried off with success. Joaquim Vieira, José Saramago: Rota de Vida. Uma Biografia (Porto: Livros Horizonte, 2018). 752 pages + 8 pages of illustrations. Print. Reviewed by David G. Frier (University of Leeds, CLEPUL/FLUL) This extensive biography of Saramago offers a portrait of the novelist’s lengthy life and ascent from rural poverty in the Ribatejo to his crowning success as a Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Vieira has conducted extensive research to inform his ambitious project: he has sought out documentary evidence (including detailed records of Saramago’s schooling, civil personal records, and PIDE files compiled under the dictatorship); he has conducted extensive interviews with individuals who had in-depth dealings with him, obtaining frank insights from his widow, Pilar del Río, and also from his long-time editor at Editorial Caminho, Zeferino Coelho, from members of the Portuguese Communist Party, and even from those whose relations with him had become strained or broken down during the course of his life (not least relatives of Ilda dos Reis and Isabel da Nóbrega, his two previous partners before Pilar del Río). In particular, Vieira makes an honest attempt to assess the extent to which Isabel da Nóbrega may have assisted the novelist’s ascent to fame, partly due, no doubt, to the contacts which her privileged background helped him establish in Lisbon. It is to be commended that Vieira has thus sought to reflect both the positive and the negative angles on the author, eschewing (although frequently noting) the all-too-frequently polarized opinions expressed both about his personality and his work. The portrait offered is of a fundamentally private individual whose relentless pursuit of creative success and recognition (including the Reviews 107 sustained ambition for achieving the award of the Nobel Prize) owed much to a need to prove himself to be in no way inferior to more privileged talents. The discussion of some of the more controversial moments in Saramago’s life (such as the dismissal of dissenting journalists during his time as an editor at the Diário de Notícias in 1975 or the abrupt break with the Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores in 2003) is sensitive, seeks out multiple perspectives and does not attempt to offer definitive judgements on issues where many of the principal protagonists are now dead. Equally, while Vieira acknowledges and offers lengthy and serious discussion of allegations made against Saramago of sexual harassment and infidelity towards his partners, he also seeks out instances of his generosity (including paying for representatives of the rural community in Monte Lavre to attend the launch of Levantado do Chão at the Casa do Alentejo in Lisbon in 1980), his willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty in helping others, and the immense energy which he devoted to supporting causes close to his heart. Vieira is also resourceful in examining the nuances of...

Alignment Instability and Covert Action: The Case of Portugal

Why do states intervene covertly in some places and not others? This is a pressing question for theorists and policymakers because covert action is widespread, costly, and consequential. I argue that states wield it—whether by supporting political parties, arming dissidents, sponsoring coups, or assassinating leaders—when they fear that a target is at risk of shifting its alignment toward the state that the intervener considers most threatening. I probe this argument in the overlooked case of U.S. covert action decision making in Portugal between 1974 and 1975. The fall from power of a stalwart regime in Lisbon and the rapid rise of military officers with suspect views on international alignment spurred discussion in Washington of the possibility of covert action. My account is the first to show how U.S. efforts helped to preserve Portugal’s position in the NATO alliance and arrested the meteoric rise of the Portuguese Communist Party. Interveners, I suggest, do not employ covert action to add to their power. Nor do they use it to advance an ideology. Rather, states act covertly when they fear international realignment.

'Be a better communist': the life story of a Portuguese militant

The history of the Portuguese Communist Party – PCP – can be explored from different perspectives. From the viewpoint of a communist militant, this study discusses some issues linked to the history of communism and its supporters' political apprenticeship. Based on a series of conversations between a Portuguese communist and the author, historians of different generations, the article focuses on a life story, where autobiography, biography, episodes from the history of Socialism and the Communist Party are mixed and questioned.

A Bandeira Vermelha em números: uma análise sobre o semanário da Federação Maximalista Portuguesa (1919-1920)

Taking by reference the problematic on the foundation of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), we focused on advancing the knowledge on the first newspaper centered on Bolshevik propaganda in Portugal, A Bandeira Vermelha. In that journey, we gathered 420 texts from the weekly newspaper of the Portuguese Maximalist Federation, from 1919 and 1920, the period in which this newspaper was the organ of this organization. In this analysis we gathered texts from maximalist newspaper texts with the goal of verifying the representation of Portuguese writers by district, the frequency of certain topics and to precise the influence of French proto-Bolshevik authors in the Portuguese maximalists ideological goals.

Lisbon's Red Belt: A Cautionary Tale on Politicisation and Depoliticisation of the Urban Realm

AbstractWithin the making of Portuguese liberal‐representative democracy, the Portuguese Communist Party became a major actor in local government in urban deprived peripheries, shaping Lisbon's Red Belt. In this article, we analyse the communist discourse on the Portuguese urban question, showing how it politicised the urban as a site of unevenness and deprivation, but simultaneously depoliticised it by refusing to acknowledge it as a proper space for conflict. This historical account leads us to a critical debate with proposals that discuss urban politicisation by ontologising “the urban” or “the political”—we argue that these approaches tend to be less helpful in understanding processes of contingent, partial and inter‐related forms of politicisation/depoliticisation of the urban in itself. In contrast, we argue for a more attentive theorisation on politicisation–depoliticisation of the urban condition as a most valuable path to grasp situated formulations of citizenship and, hence, configurations of political regimes.

Knowledge and the Experience of Women Living Underground During the Portuguese Dictatorship

This paper assumes that formative processes are not limited to the school context or model but that other life contexts and experiences, even if not intentionally, have educational effects. These informal formative contexts and experiences can play a key role individual´s development, resulting not only in superficial changes, but also in deep changes in terms of subjectivity and identity. Our research involves clandestine militants of the Portuguese Communist Party during the dictatorship, and explores the type of knowledge acquired during their hiding experience (1940-1974) that allowed them to resist and survive over long periods. As our focus is the experience of women, based on narrative discourses of women (or about them) we will consider the role and status of women in hiding. The discourses were collected through several published autobiographical narratives and mainly interviews where we tried to identify the learning processes, the people seen as significant for knowledge acquisition, and also how knowing, knowing how to do and knowing how to be were constructed during living in hiding.

Political positioning and discursive articulation: the case of the European discourse of the Portuguese Communist Party

The article consists on a diachronic computational analysis of the European discourse of the Portuguese Communist Party. It demonstrates how the process of discoursive articulation has allowed the party to define its political positioning throughout time, particularly in the competitive context initiated in Portugal after the 1974 revolution.

Mário Soares (1924–2017)

Mário Soares (1924–2017) João Carlos Espada Mário Soares, a figure widely hailed as the founding father of Portuguese democracy and a member of the Journal of Democracy’s International Advisory Committee, died on 7 January 2017 at the age of 92. Three days of official mourning and a state funeral marked his passing. This formal tribute to his service as prime minister and later president of Portugal was also an occasion to honor and reflect on the key role that Soares had played in his country’s 1974 transition to democracy, which initiated the “third wave” of global democratization. For decades prior to the 1970s, Portugal had lived under a right-wing military dictatorship that was nearly as old as Soares himself—it had begun in 1926, when he was not quite two-years old. A Lisbon attorney and well-known foe of the dictatorship, he suffered no fewer than twelve arrests. In 1968, the regime sent him into exile on the Atlantic island of São Tomé (at that time still a Portuguese colony) off the west coast of Africa. In 1970, he was allowed to leave São Tomé for Paris. A few years after that, at a semi-clandestine meeting in West Germany, Soares and his wife Maria Barroso founded the Socialist Party of Portugal. He served as its first general secretary. On 25 April 1974, a nearly bloodless military coup ended autocratic rule in Portugal, and, as Samuel P. Huntington later put it, “implausibly and unwittingly” began “the third wave of democratization in the modern world.” In the early phase of what would come to be called the Carnation Revolution, Soares became foreign minister in a coalition government that included the Portuguese Communist Party, an unreconstructed Soviet-aligned organization. But Soares’s freedom struggle had not ceased. During the period of uncertainty after the dictatorship’s end, hard-line Communist elements in the Lisbon government began tightening their authoritarian grip on military, political, and civil institutions. Mário Soares resigned from that government in 1975, and then led a spontaneous coalition that managed to thwart the Communists’ power play, with the decisive moment coming in the form of a failed pro-Communist coup in Lisbon on November 25. Immediately after defeating that antidemocratic coup, Soares stood tall against attempts to outlaw the Communist Party, reasserting his vision of Portugal as a country firmly committed to liberal-democratic principles. In 1976, Soares became Portugal’s first elected prime minister and guided the process of joining the European Economic Community (the [End Page 176] precursor to the European Union), which admitted Portugal as a full member in 1985. In 1986, after starting with just 8 percent support in opinion polls, Soares won election as the first civilian president in the history of Portugal’s young democracy. Five years later, he was reelected with an overwhelming 70 percent of the vote. During the January 10 state funeral, a speech that Soares had made during his 1986 presidential campaign was replayed as his coffin was borne to its final resting place. Once again, Soares’s summoning words rang out: After the 25th of April [1974], some of those who had fought against the dictatorship started opening new prisons. They and their predecessors had mainly a blind lack of respect for their fellow citizens. They and their predecessors believed themselves to be the sole owners of the truth. They conceived of themselves as being predestined to save the Portuguese. There is a certainty that I have always had: that truth does not belong to anybody in exclusivity and that nothing can replace toleration. This is one of my great principles. I have always been on the side of those who were and are oppressed, those who felt and feel excluded from their own country. In Lisbon, in exile on São Tomé, as well as at Fonte Luminosa [the site of a landmark anticommunist rally in Lisbon on 19 July 1975], I have always fought for the Portuguese to be allowed to live with one another under liberty, for all to be allowed to feel that we all are an integral part of Portugal. While Mário...

The Ambiguities of Nationalism

In Communism and Nationalism in Portugal, José Neves is more concerned with the ideological history of the Portuguese Communist Party, that is to say with what discursive terms it concerned itself, than with the particular historical issues posed by its concrete development, and with the party’s actual history. In a nutshell, what we have in this work is an attempt to grasp the history of a Marxist party in non-Marxist terms. The whole outlook of the work is therefore concerned with looking at the intellectual history of Portuguese Communism from the outside, in terms of the development of a discourse that is not taken as true or false, but as a thing unto itself.

U-Turn: The Portuguese Radical Left from Marginality to Government Support

The 2015 legislative elections in Portugal led to a major shift in the characteristics of the party system through the formation of a socialist minority government supported by the Left Block and the Portuguese Communist Party. This study examines the trajectory of the radical left in Portugal since the implementation of the 2011 EU–International Monetary Fund bailout and analyses the possible reasons for the parties becoming coalition partners. We argue that left–left cooperation is primarily explained by the impact of austerity policies – in particular the huge welfare state retrenchment – and party leadership interests. In addition, the study confirms the importance of centralisation and intra-party cohesion in establishing a new politics of alliance.

The condition of Portuguese democracy during the Troika’s intervention, 2011–15

Abstract Four main elements characterized Portuguese democracy during the financial bailout by the Troika: first, a government that governed well beyond its 2011 electoral mandate; second, an enormous imbalance in the sacrifices required of citizens (wage earners and retired) and capital; third, powerful delegitimization as a consequence of poor economic and public finance results; fourth, the last of the problems behind Portuguese dissatisfaction with how democracy functioned was, until the 2015 elections, the opposition’s inability to propose alternatives, primarily because the Partido Socialista (PS – Socialist Party) was a weak opposition to the government and until recently the left-wing parties seemed unable to cooperate to create a governmental alternative. What we show here with updated data (2012 and 2014) and specific measures to tap the phenomena is that there are specific elements to the erosion of democratic support and institutional trust as a result of the Troika years and the way austerity policies were imposed by the right-wing government (2011–15), as well as due to the pattern of opposition until the elections of 4 October 2015. The 2015 general election brought about major changes. The resulting minority Socialist Party PS government, supported in parliament by the parties of the radical left – Bloco de Esquerda (BE – Left Bloc), Partido Comunista Português (PCP – Portuguese Communist Party) and Partido Ecologista ‘Os Verdes’ (PEV – Ecology Party ‘The Greens’) – marks a major change with left-wing parties cooperating for the first time in the government of Portugal.

Fazer a História do Estado Novo. Uma conversa com Fernando Rosas

Fernando Rosas is a full professor at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at the New University of Lisbon. He was until recently president of the Institute of Contemporary History and is also known for his political activism. However, before becoming a historian, Rosas already had a political past in the opposition to the Estado Novo, first in the Portuguese Communist Party and then, closer to the 25th April, in the MRPP (Movimento Reorganizativo do Partido do Proletariado). He performed several militant tasks, among them journalism. After the PREC (Revolutionary Process in Course), he remained a member of the MRPP until the end of the seventies. More than a formal interview, I tried to establish a conversation with Fernando Rosas, not discussing his historiographical work in an excessively conceptual manner, but rather taking advantage of his career as a historian to raise historiographical questions, and simultaneously question the historiographical field in Portugal from the 1970s to the present day.