The KKE is informed and follows with great care the developments in the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE).We know that today intense pressure is being exerted on the communist movement, on every CP, in the conditions of the negative international correlation of forces, with the aim that they abandon the revolutionary strategy, are co-opted into the capitalist system and become a force that manages the system. This is not something new in Spain, which saw the strong opportunist current of Eurocommunism in the ranks of the CP of Spain. The PCPE, which emerged as force that confronted the current of Eurocommunism, has developed long-term comradely relations with the KKE, which waged a major political fight against the corresponding opportunist current in our country. The social-democratic party SYRIZA emerged from this opportunist current and later gathered together all the rotten elements that social-democratic PASOK provided.

In addition, our party, which began the International Meetings of Communist and Workers Parties in 1999 in Athens, which have been consolidated with the support of other CPs as an important event for the international communist movement, had proposed and had fought for the PCPE to be included in the list of parties that are invited to them, known as the Solidnet list. Later on, when the forces of opportunism in Europe established their own centre, the so-called “Party of the European Left” and the need to form a communist pole intensified, which would defend Marxism-Leninism, the necessity of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the construction of the new socialist-communist society, the “International Communist Review” was founded as a first effort to form this pole.

In this new effort the KKE struggled alongside the PCPE, as it did also in the new form of regional cooperation of the CPs of Europe (Communist Initiative) which is based on a Joint Founding Declaration and is in confrontation with the forces of opportunism in Europe.

In addition, the KKE, developing close and comradely relations with the PCPE, has visited Spain on many occasions and has invited cadres of the party in Greece. Delegations of the KKE participated in multi-day visits to workplaces in many cities of Spain, also supporting the electoral battles and other activities of the PCPE by speaking at rallies and meetings. Over the course of this cooperation, we came to know the PCPE better, its cadres and members, the militants that support the PCPE and the “Collectives of Young Communists” which have developed important, internationalist relations with the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE).

In the conditions that have arisen with the inner-party crisis of the PCPE, our party will seek relations with that party which it considers there is a proximity of political positions or approach in terms of goals and priorities that contribute to the development of the struggle and regroupment of the international communist movement. From this standpoint, our party from now on will develop bilateral relations with the PCPE with as its General Secretary Astor Garcia, judging that the positions which this party expresses correspond to the longstanding comradely relations we have developed with the comrades of the PCPE.

At the same time we should note that the course of the group of comrades Carmelo Suarez-Julio Diaz is making a negative impression, as is exemplified by the text recently issued by their “Political Secretariat” with the title: “Some want to use the PCPE as part of his strategy to break the International Communist Movement (ICM)”. There is an attempt in this text and other similar interventions to turn reality on its head. So those parties that seek to form a pole to defend Marxism-Leninism and have devoted their forces for the regroupment and unity of the communist movement, for the reinforcement of proletarian internationalism are accused of splitting the International Communist Movement and not those parties that are CPs in name only, which openly collaborate with the bourgeois class, with capital, which participate in bourgeois governments, which support the imperialist plans of NATO, the EU, which formed the opportunist centre of the PEL in Europe.

In addition, the publication of Trotskyist positions in the newspaper Unidad y Lucha, as well as the contacts and joint events which this group began with the opportunist CP Spain, which supported and supports the anti-people government of SYRIZA in Greece and fights against the KKE, have nothing to do with the PCPE that our party knew and struggled alongside.

We should note that during the preparation of the 7^th issue of the International Communist Review (ICR), which is dedicated to the 100^th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, this group submitted an article with certain unusual positions, such as, for example, that the socialist revolution…was bourgeois in content, or with other positions that downgraded the importance of the Marxist-Leninist worldview, supporting amongst other things the mistaken strategy of stages to socialism etc. These positions were at the focus of the criticism carried out by the KKE, as well as other parties during meeting of the Editorial Board, as well as afterwards. The intention of the KKE and other CPs, like the CP of Mexico, to take a public position in the “Space for Discussion” of the ICR against these positions led to the group of Carmelo Suarez-Julio Diaz withdrawing their article so that there would be no criticism, concealing in this way the unacceptable positions argued for in their article from the members and cadres of the PCPE.

After all this and other things that have happened in Spain  which we are aware of, as regards the role of this group, after the provocative attack against the CP of Mexico, which has stood at the side of the PCPE in very difficult conditions, after the slanders against the KKE by cadres of this group and the hostility aimed by it at our party and the international joint initiatives we have taken and in which the two parties participate, we want to stress that on our part we will continue to have relations with the PCPE that we knew, struggled together with against opportunism and for the formation of a contemporary revolutionary strategy in the international communist movement and this, in our estimation, is expressed by the PCPE under the leadership of Astor Garcia and the other comrades who have taken on the reins of the PCPE in these difficult conditions.

International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE

04.05.2017