Almost eleven o’clock in the morning. Paulo Raimundo is already with Soeiro Pereira Gomes. Jeronimo de Sousa arrives. He talks for a few minutes with the press officer who will accompany the PCP Secretary General throughout the day. Then go to the bar, there at the entrance. A “good morning”, a smile and, it can be seen, thinner, but agile on his 76th birthday almost a month ago, on April 13.
Paulo Raimundo, in jeans and a beige shirt, an almost brown shirt, arrives a few minutes later. On Friday “I can’t be there before a quarter past nine, half past eight”. It’s the most “working” day, he says with a laugh, with his three children aged 16, 11 and 3. And then the road to Lisbon. “It must have been an hour and a quarter, an hour and a half every day. On days when things are going well, I even get nervous”.
When Raimundo was born, Jerónimo was 29 years old and a member of the Constituent Assembly. They share in life, in addition to the post of general secretary – which one has held for almost 18 years and the other now, since November last year – and a dedication” to the PCP, the day “13”. Jerónimo de Sousa was born on “April 13”, Paulo Raimundo married on “May 13”, in the year [2017] in which “Pope Francisco came to Fátima, Benfica became champion and Salvador won Eurovision. It was all on the same day”.
The “routine” of the General Secretary of the Communists has no big “secrets”: on Mondays “there is usually a Political Commission, and on Wednesdays there is a Secretariat. I usually arrive before nine o’clock. And then, on the other days, it is agenda, agenda and schedule”.
It’s coffee time in the head office bar. Then we take the elevator up to the Press Office. It’s time to “flip your eyes through the newspapers”. Two televisions, “the news channels”, are on. Marcelo’s voice speaks of “poverty”, of “a major problem for sustainability”. Paulo Raimundo receives the newspapers already read by the two “comrades” who work there. The most “important” thing, and there are many such pages, is marked with yellow sticky notes.
“An English teacher taught me a technique: read a text diagonally and then, with the words left in your memory, look them up and develop from there. An English tactic… [e ri-se] I was never a great expert in English.”
The word: evidence. It came across very naturally. It is an almost immediate response to questions about electoral losses and loss of influence due to lower political representation.
He leafs through the newspapers. Opinion articles deserve some attention because “they ultimately mark thoughts.” “And we already know that some thoughts spread after two or three days. There are articles that were not written by chance. A political and ideological battle is raging there.”
Watch for a news report on the SIS, the Galamba case. “They’ve been missing for so long and now this.” What do you think? “There are things that need to be explained, it’s evidence [palavra que haveria de repetir ao longo do dia]. In the end nothing comes of it. And who will it go to?” he asks and replies. “It will go to poor SIS who went there to get the computer from that other guy, that gentleman from Guimarães.” Is it worrying? “Of course. If we wanted to be Machiavellian, we could even say that sometimes something has to come to mask the background wave.”
There is a difference between being one of the “collectives” and now being the leader of the party: “there are things I have to pay more attention to than before: – the scum of the days. If there is any contact with the media [haveria de dizer-me que “quase não aparecem” e neste dia só a Lusa ao final da tarde] it’s very much around that, the scum of the days. I used to not have to worry about that.”
Are you annoyed by the newspapers? Paulo Raimundo laughs. “If there’s one thing I don’t deal with, it’s that I handle it very badly, it’s lies and hypocrisy. If everything they write is true, people like it or not, but that’s true. It It’s one thing for you to write about a phone call I made, it’s another thing for you to write something I didn’t say”. And the interpretation of what he said? “We can even discuss that, that is debatable. I can handle criticism, observation or other interpretation well.”
The conversation continues with habits, which you have had to form or set aside, and which you have not dropped at all. “There’s no such thing…”. And he thinks for a moment. “When the gas runs out, I still have to accelerate. Of course I have a modesty that I didn’t have. My image is the image of the party and that ensures a minimum of concern.” Which? “I don’t miss going to the supermarket, but I don’t wear shorts and flip flops like I used to. And the shaving…tomorrow, if all goes well, I’m going to spend the day without shaving.”
Paulo Raimundo, who has not smoked for three years – “he used to smoke two and a half packs of SG Filter a day” – now smokes roll-your-own tobacco. And “much less, in this new circumstance I smoke much less”.
Let’s go to the balcony. A few moments for a few cigarettes. Are you stubborn? Is it difficult to convince you that you are wrong? That I should have said one or the other? Smiles again. “No… it’s a school in this house. Especially since there are no arguments against the facts.” And advice from Jeronimo de Sousa? “We pass each other every day and often here on the porch to light a cigarette.” And then he adds, “I never took a reprimand, if that was your question. But if I had to, I would.”
Do you have? But now he is general secretary, speaking is the general secretary of the PCP, it is no longer Paulo Raimundo. Does your word have more weight now or not? “It’s something I can deal with because I don’t feel that way. And I suppose my comrades haven’t either.’
We went down. Lunch is at a nearby restaurant, at the end of the street. I turn off the recorder. Small changes in tone or conversation. I hear that he already pays 130 euros rent again. He insists that CGD should have a maximum spread of 0.25% because “this forced the other banks to follow… it’s obvious”. On your way out, ask for a selfie. He feels, he says, “more at ease, more comfortable, but the little nervousness at the time of the speeches remains”.
3:30 pm
We spend the afternoon in Alcácer do Sal, in the Setúbal district. Visit to the municipal shipyard and a public session, in Largo Luís de Camões, at six o’clock in the afternoon.
It’s hot and windy. The shipyard workers, practically in silence, in a huge circle, in one of the pavilions, hear the Secretary General of the PCP speak of “this combat crew, people of work (…), who are those who create wealth and the economy at work is the one who puts his hand in the dough (…), that a general wage increase is urgent”.
Then head to the headquarters in Alcácer, a former GNR post. The mayor, a communist mayor in his third and final term, would arrive shortly afterwards.
“We have nine or ten of these cases, in the third term. They are things that are not indifferent. Municipalities are very special. We will have to find a solution and we will do everything we can not to waste Vítor’s experience. [Proença]”, it says.
We are talking about election cycles. Madeira already this year, European and Azores in the next year, municipalities in 2025 and then legislative and presidential.
Paulo Raimundo does not see the election result as a “barometer” for his leadership. Don’t you see, “nor was it ever so”. “For us, this has never been a yardstick for making assessments of general secretaries.” It is the judgment of the party under your leadership, I say. “That’s proof,” he replies. “The electoral performance criterion can be an evaluation of our work, of our priorities, it was never a criterion to evaluate that particular position.” Never ? “No. Thinking of the person as a savior or a gravedigger… that’s no problem.” And since he doesn’t like to “lose, not even beans”, he will do anything “so that it doesn’t happen like that”.
About a hundred people are waiting for Paulo Raimundo in the square. There is no television camera or radio. Lusa had just arrived. I watch from a distance.
“There’s a relentless and even dangerous difference between media life and concrete life, people’s lives. It’s brutal because it is. There’s no connection between people’s lives and media life. And it’s dangerous because that’s a transform society that does.” does not exist, transforms a reality that does not exist.”
Source: DN
