Álvaro Barreirinhas Cunhal, (born Coimbra, 10 November 1913), is a Portuguese politician, secretary-general of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) from 1961 to 1992.

He studied Law at the University of Lisbon, where he joined the PCP, then an illegal organization, in 1931. In the following years, he went underground, made a first visit to the USSR, joined the Central Comittee, and was arrested by the first time in 1937.

While in jail, he presented his thesis (on abortion); the jury included Marcelo Caetano. He then taught for some months at Colégio Moderno, in Lisbon. Among his pupils was future Portuguese president Mário Soares. By the end of 1941, he was again underground, and remained so until 1949, when he was arrested. He remained in jail until he made a spectacular escape from the prison at Peniche in 1960.

In 1961, he was elected secretary-general, a position he held until 1992. He left Portugal the next year, and lived in Moscow and Paris until the Carnation Revolution in 1974.

Returning to Portugal, he was minister without portfolio in several of the provisional governments which followed the revolution, and was sucessively elected for Parliament in all elections until 1987.

Always more a Brezhnevite, Cunhal never supported Gorbachev's perestroika. He voiced support for the 1991 attempted coup in the USSR.

He left his office in 1992, being succeded by Carlos Carvalhas; his voice however remained important in the following years, and has consistently sided with the more conservative wing of the party.

Manuel Tiago

Cunhal is also a fiction writer, with several novels under the pseudonym Manuel Tiago, which he recognized as his own only in 1995. He also made the drawings for the original edition of Soeiro Pereira Gomes ' book Esteiros.

• Até Amanhã, Camaradas
• Cinco Dias, Cinco Noites

(made into a film in 1996 by José Fonseca e Costa )

• A Estrela de Seis Pontas
• A Casa de Eulália