For the city named Bento Gonçalves in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

, see Bento Gonçalves, Rio Grande do Sul

Bento Gonçalves, Rio Grande do Sul

Bento Gonçalves is a town located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Created in 1875, it is one of the centres of the Italian immigration in Brazil. It is also known as the 'wine capital of Brazil', due to its vineyards and wine production...

Bento António Gonçalves, GOL

Order of Liberty

The Order of Liberty, or Freedom, is a Portuguese honorific civil order that distinguishes relevant services to the cause of democracy and freedom, in the defense of the values of civilization and human dignification...

(1902–1942) was the second Secretary General of the Portuguese Communist Party

Portuguese Communist Party

The Portuguese Communist Party is a major left-wing political party in Portugal. It is a Marxist-Leninist party, and its organization is based upon democratic centralism. The party also considers itself to be patriotic and internationalist....

. He was born in Montalegre, Vila Real District, in the North of Portugal. Not much is known about his childhood. In 1915 he became an apprentice mechanical turner in Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

. Four years later, in 1919 he started doing the same work in the arsenal of the Portuguese navy

Portuguese Navy

The Portuguese Navy is the naval branch of the Portuguese Armed Forces which, in cooperation and integrated with the other branches of the Portuguese military, is charged with the military defence of Portugal....

 in Alfeite.

In 1922 he joined the navy and one year later he started the elementary pilot course. In 1924 he was sent to the Portuguese colony of Angola

Angola (Portugal)

Angola is the common name by which the Portuguese colony in southwestern Africa was known across different periods of time...

 and started to work as a mechanical turner in the Luanda

Luanda

Luanda, formerly named São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda, is the capital and largest city of Angola. Located on Angola's coast with the Atlantic Ocean, Luanda is both Angola's chief seaport and its administrative center. It has a population of at least 5 million...

 railroad company. He became there an activist, trying to organize the Union of the Luanda's Workers.

In 1926 he returned to Lisbon, where he became a member of the Navy Workers Labor Union, in the next year he traveled to Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, in the Portuguese delegation to the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

In September 1928 he joined the Portuguese Communist Party and became a member of the cell of the Arsenal of Alfeite. In 1929 he participated in the reorganizative conference of the Communist Party and was elected to the provisional Central Commission. Soon after, he became Secretary General.

In 1930 he was arrested by the political police of the Estado Novo regime and was forced to live in the Azores

Azores

The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...

. One year later he was transferred to Cape Verde

Cape Verde

The Republic of Cape Verde is an island country, spanning an archipelago of 10 islands located in the central Atlantic Ocean, 570 kilometres off the coast of Western Africa...

. In 1933 he returned to Portugal and went underground. In November of the same year he traveled to Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 where he established contacts with the Comintern

Comintern

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...

 and the Communist Party of Spain.

In 1935, Bento Gonçalves participated in the 7th Congress of the Comintern. Soon after returning to Portugal he was arrested again by the political police. After that he was transferred to a prison in the Azores where he was put on trial by a military court for his communist activities. In the end of the year he was transferred to the prison camp in Tarrafal

Tarrafal camp

Tarrafal was a prison camp in Cape Verde, then a Portuguese colony, set up by the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War , where opponents of his right-wing authoritarian regime were sent...

, where he died of sickness in 1942.

In the Avante! Festival

Avante! Festival

Every year, in the first weekend of September the Avante! Festival is held named after the official newspaper of the Portuguese Communist Party...

of 2002, the Communist Party carried out an exposition in the central pavilion about his work and life.