Sitting on a plastic chair, José Branco rests his hands on his stomach, placing them just below the yellow hammer and sickle symbol that stands out from his red T-shirt. “This is what I’ll wear for my funeral,” says the 84-year-old, who has been a member of the Portuguese Communist party (PCP) for nearly half his life. “I am a communist and proud of it!”

Every year, on the first weekend of September, more than 200,000 people arrive in Seixal, in the suburbs of Lisbon for Festa do Avante!, the annual festival of the PCP. Not all go for political reasons – but even when nationally famous pop and rock bands are playing on the festival’s Glastonbury-like stage, the horizon is dominated by red flags and Soviet symbols.

Politics are always present at the Festa, and this year even more so, with legislative elections scheduled for 4 October – the first after a four-year mandate by a centre-right coalition which, under a tough bailout programme, lowered salaries and pensions. The unemployment rate is at 12.1% and the number of people on the brink of poverty (19.5%) is the highest since 2004.

The PCP, an ardent critic of the government, is hoping to profit from its hard, intransigent rhetoric. The latest opinion polls suggest the party (which, together with the Greens, make up the CDU coalition) will get 10.4% of the vote in the elections, which would be its best result since 1987. Such a result would also confirm the PCP as the most successful among its few counterparts that still profess Marxism-Leninism in Europe.

Rita Rato, a 32-year-old communist MP, thinks the party’s rise in popularity is the result of its culture of “proximity with the lives of real people in our country”. Every Monday, Rato pays a visit to workplaces where redundancies are on the way or meets people who fear the closure of public services.

“Sometimes I go to these places more than once a week. And if I can’t go, my comrades will. So people are used to seeing us. They know that we’re not like the others, who only show up whenever there’s an election.”

The PCP is still far from turning into an electoral phenomenon like Greece’s Syriza party or the Spanish Podemos. “It’s not fair to make those comparisons,” says Rato. “But it’s true that in this context of growing poverty, of emigration and work insecurity, we can grow a whole lot more.”

At the top of the polls is the Socialist party, with 36% of the vote, followed closely by the PAF, the governing coalition, with 35% of predicted votes.

At the festival, each of the 20 regions of Portugal is represented in its own plywood pavilion where typical food and drinks are sold. “The whole country fits in here … Even the world!” says Rato.

There is also an international section with, among others, representatives of the Communist party of Cuba, where dozens of people wait in line for mojitos, and their Italian counterparts, whose activities focus on selling T-shirts with photos of Che Guevara, Lenin, and Hugo Chávez.

“The Festa is, in a way, what we want the country to become: three days of justice, peace, progress and fraternity,” says Rato. “A place where everyone’s individual energy and creativity is put together in order to build something beautiful and collective.”

