The left of the left-wing. A study of political anthropology in Spain and Portugal

In the mid-sixties, several organizations or political parties arise against the hegemony of the PCUS. Identified as the New Left, these organizations adopt the Marxism-Leninism as the base of their ideology. They are characterized by an idealization of the labour class, hierarchical and centralised organizational structure, and belligerency against the soviet orthodoxy. The conditions of repression, clandestinity and isolation of the dictatorships that Portugal and Spain suffer, increase the similarities among the revolutionary lefts. In their evolution we can also find several similarities: the more the process of parliamentary democratization progress, the less importance they have, and the instauration of the democracy cause crisis and fast descent of most of those political parties. Nevertheless, in the 90s, once the violence is excluded as an option and being careful of the danger of sectarization, some organization of the former radical left of the peninsula experience very deep changes. Those changes draw two alternative profiles of another new left: the revolutionists become alternatives, and the radicals become successful parlamentarians.