Francisco Fruits

Francisco Frutos Gras (Calella, January 25, 1939 - Madrid, July 26, 2020) was a Spanish politician, general secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) between 1998 and 2009.

Biography

Born in Calella, and the son of peasants, he worked in the fields until he was 25 years old. His first political experience took place in unionism in Safa, a textile factory in Blanes. There he helped organize the then clandestine union Comisiones Obreras (CCOO). In 1963 he joined the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC). After reaching a position in the leadership of the CCOO, he participated in the Assemblea de Catalunya and, already in the first democratic elections, he entered the Parliament of Catalonia as a representative of the PSUC. In 1981 he was for a brief period general secretary of the PSUC. In the early 1980s he was involved in the internal problems of the PSUC, and he chose to move his political activity to Madrid to work alongside Gerardo Iglesias, general secretary of the Communist Party of Spain between 1982 and 1988. After Julio Anguita surpassed him in the election for General Coordinator of the United Left (IU), he held various positions in the leadership and was number two in the 1996 general elections. In December 1998, he succeeded Anguita in the general secretariat of the PCE and, after his illness, in January 2000, he was appointed by Izquierda Unida to occupy the candidacy for the Presidency of the Government for the elections of the year 2000. The full leadership of IU decided to sign an agreement for those elections with the PSOE in the face of the serious setback in the municipal elections, to block the way for a government of the PP who finally won the victory. IU suffered a serious electoral disaster, losing half of its electorate and 13 deputies. That same year, in the VI Federal Assembly of the IU, Gaspar Llamazares was elected as General Coordinator of the coalition (which had obtained deputy certificate for Asturias in the general elections) by a narrow margin, combining the votes of various critical currents of the IU. with outgoing address.

In 2002 he was again elected general secretary of the PCE. In 2003, he decided that he would give up his seat in the Congress of Deputies and that he would not run in the 2004 general elections.

In June 2005, he was re-elected general secretary of the PCE, although he ceded several of his responsibilities to the new president Felipe Alcaraz.

In May 2008, Francisco Frutos announced that after ten years in charge of the PCE General Secretariat he felt "tired" and that he would not be a candidate for re-election in that position at the next PCE Congress, where he would be replaced by José Luis Centella.

In 2014 he was a signatory of a manifesto of members of the left in favor of the unity of Spain and Catalonia and rejecting independence.

Retired from political life since 2009, on October 29, 2017 he regained prominence by participating in the demonstration in Barcelona for the unity of Spain called by the Catalan Civil Society, being one of the speakers who read a speech. In his speech reproached some sectors of the left for having "become accomplices of nationalism".

He died in Madrid at the age of eighty-one as a result of cancer.

Works

He was the author of the popularization book entitled Communism told simply, Maeva, Madrid, 2003.

Seventeen of his most significant speeches from 1998 to 2009 are published in the monographic issue of the PCE studies magazine Nuestra Bandera, no. 221, vol III, 2009 under the title < i>The dialectical experience of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain: Speeches by Francisco Frutos Gras.

In 2019 he presented «Ten years of political gaze 2009-2018», a compilation in 3 volumes of articles collected in publications and on his blog.