Francisco Largo Caballero

Francisco Largo Caballero
Francisco Largo Caballero
Prime Minister of Spain
	In office; 4 September 1936 – 17 May 1937
President	Manuel Azaña
Preceded by	José Giral Pereira
Succeeded by	Juan Negrín López
Minister of War
	In office; 4 September 1936 – 17 May 1937
Prime Minister	Himself
Preceded by	Juan Hernández Saravia
Succeeded by	Indalecio Prieto
President of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
	In office; 12 October 1932 – 1 July 1936
Preceded by	Remigio Cabello
Succeeded by	Ramón González Peña
Minister of Labour and Social Security
	In office; 14 April 1931 – 12 September 1933
Prime Minister	Manuel Azaña
Preceded by	Gabriel Maura Gamazo
Succeeded by
Member of the Congress of Deputies
	In office; 14 July 1931 – 31 March 1939
Constituency	Madrid
	In office; 18 May 1918 – 1 June 1919
Constituency	Barcelona
Personal details
Born	15 October 1869; Madrid, Kingdom of Spain
Died	23 March 1946 (aged 76); Paris, France
Political party	PSOE
Signature

Francisco Largo Caballero (15 October 1869 – 23 March 1946) was a Spanish politician and trade unionist. He was one of the historic leaders of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and of the Workers' General Union (UGT). In 1936 and 1937 Caballero served as the Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War.

Biography[]

Early years[]

Born in Madrid, as a young man he made his living stuccoing walls. He participated in a construction workers strike in 1890 and joined the PSOE in 1894. Upon the death in 1925 of party founder Pablo Iglesias, he succeeded him as head of the party and of the UGT.^[1]

Political career[]

Moderate in his positions at the beginning of his political life, he advocated maintaining a degree of UGT cooperation with the dictatorial government of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, which permitted the union to continue functioning under his military dictatorship (that lasted from 1923 to 1930).^[2] This was the start of his political conflict with Indalecio Prieto, who opposed all collaboration with the dictatorial regime.

He was Minister of Labor Relations between 1931 and 1933, in the first governments of the Second Spanish Republic, headed by Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, and in that of his successor Manuel Azaña.^[3] Caballero attempted to improve the conditions of landless labourers (braceros) in the rural south. On 28 April 1931 he introduced a decree of municipal boundaries to prevent the importation of foreign labour while there remained unemployed workers within the municipality. In May he established mixed juries (jurados mixtos) to arbitrate in agrarian labour disputes, and introduced an eight-hour working day in the countryside. Alongside these, a decree on obligatory cultivation prevented owners from using their land however they wanted.^[4] He enjoyed great popularity among the masses of workers, who saw their own austere existences reflected in his way of life.^[1]

In the elections of 19 November 1933, the right-wing Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA) won power in Spain. The government nominally led by the centrist Radical Alejandro Lerroux was dependent on CEDA's parliamentary support. Responding to this reversal of fortune, Largo abandoned his moderate positions, began to talk of "socialist revolution", and became the leader of the left (Marxist and revolutionary) wing of the UGT and the PSOE.^[5] In early October 1934, after three CEDA ministers entered the government, he was one of the leaders of the failed armed rising of workers (mainly in Asturias) which was forcefully put down by the CEDA-dominated government.^[6]

He defended the pact of alliance with the other workers' political parties and trade unions, such as the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and the anarchist trade union, the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Once again, this placed him at odds with Prieto.^[7] He declared, that he, Largo Caballero "shall be the second Lenin", whose aim is the union of Iberian Soviet republics.^{[dead link]}^[8]

After the Popular Front won the elections in February 1936, president Manuel Azaña proposed that Prieto join the government, but Largo blocked these attempts at collaboration between PSOE and the Republican government.^[9] Largo dismissed fears of a military coup, and predicted that, were it to happen, a general strike would defeat it, opening the door to the workers' revolution.

In the event, the coup attempt by the colonial army and the right came on 17 July 1936. While not immediately successful, further actions by rebellious army units sparked the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), in which the republic was ultimately defeated and destroyed.

Prime Minister of Spain[]

Francisco Largo Caballero's office, kept in the Archives of the Labor Movement in Alcalá de Henares.

Monument of Largo Caballero

On 4 September 1936, a few months into the civil war, Largo Caballero was designated Prime Minister and Minister of War.^[10] Besides conducting the war, he also focused on maintaining military discipline and government authority within the Republic.^[11] On 4 November 1936 Largo Caballero persuaded the anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT; "National Confederation of Labour") to join the government, with four members assigned to junior ministries including Justice, Health and Trade. The decision was controversial with the CNT members.^[12]

The Barcelona May Days led to a governmental crisis^[13] that forced Caballero to resign on 17 May 1937. Juan Negrín, also a member of the PSOE, was appointed Prime Minister in his stead.^[14]

The cabinet, formed on 4 September 1936 and reshuffled on 4 November 1936, consisted of:^[15]

Ministry	Start	End	Officeholder	Party
Prime Minister and War	4 September 1936	17 May 1937	Francisco Largo Caballero	PSOE (left)
State (Foreign Affairs)	4 September 1936	17 May 1937	Julio Álvarez del Vayo	PSOE (left)
Finance	4 September 1936	17 May 1937	Juan Negrín López	PSOE (moderate)
Interior	4 September 1936	17 May 1937		PSOE (left)
Industry and Commerce	4 September 1936	4 November 1936	Anastasio de Gracia Villarrubia	PSOE (moderate)
Industry	4 November 1936	17 May 1937	Juan Peiró Belis	CNT
Commerce	4 November 1936	17 May 1937	Juan López Sánchez	CNT
Navy and Air	4 September 1936	17 May 1937	Indalecio Prieto Tuero	PSOE (moderate)
Education and Fine Arts	4 September 1936	17 May 1937	Jesús Hernández Tomás	PCE
Agriculture	4 September 1936	17 May 1937	Vicente Uribe Galdeano	PCE
Justice	4 September 1936	4 November 1936		IR
Justice	4 November 1936	17 May 1937	Juan García Oliver	CNT
Communications and Merchant Marine	4 September 1936	17 May 1937	Bernardo Giner de los Ríos	UR
Labor and Health	4 September 1936	4 November 1936	José Tomás y Piera	ERC
Labor and Planning	4 November 1936	15 May 1937	Anastasio de Gracia Villarrubia	PSOE (moderate)
Health and Social Assistance	4 November 1936	17 May 1937	Federica Montseny Mañé	CNT
Public Works	4 September 1936	15 September 1936	Vicente Uribe Galdeano (Interim)	PCE
Public Works	15 September 1936	17 May 1937	Julio Just Gimeno	IR
Propaganda	4 November 1936	17 May 1937	Carlos Esplá Rizo	IR
Without portfolio	4 September 1936	15 May 1937	José Giral Pereira	IR
Without portfolio	4 September 1936	15 May 1937	Manuel Irujo y Ollo	PNV
Without portfolio	4 November 1936	17 May 1936	Jaime Ayguadé Miró	ERC

Exile, death, and legacy[]

Upon the defeat of the Republic in 1939, he fled to France. Arrested during the German occupation of France, he spent most of World War II imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp, until the liberation of the camps at the end of the war.^[16]

He died in exile in Paris in 1946;^[1] his remains were returned to Madrid in 1978 after Franco's death in 1975.^{[citation needed]}

Footnotes[]

^ Jump up to: ^a ^b ^c Thomas 2003, p. 39.
^ Beevor 2006, p. 17.
^ Beevor 2006, p. 21.
^ Preston, Paul. The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform, Reaction and Revolution in the Spanish Second Republic. Routledge. New York. 1994. p. 81.
^ Beevor 2006, p. 28.
^ Beevor 2006, pp. 29–32.
^ Jackson 1967, pp. 206–208.
^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 19 January 2010. Retrieved 20 July 2010.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^ Preston 2006, p. 84.
^ Thomas 2003, p. 392–394.
^ Jackson 1967, pp. 341.
^ Paz 2011, p. 96-97.
^ Preston 2006, pp. 256–258.
^ Graham 2005, p. 162.
^ Urquijo y Goitia 2008, p. 129–130.
^ Beevor 2006, p. 413.

Sources[]

Beevor, Antony (2006). The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-303765-X.
Graham, Helen (2005). The Spanish Civil War. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280377-1.
Jackson, Gabriel (1967). The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00757-8.
Paz, Abel (2011). The Story of the Iron Column: Militant Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War. AK Press. ISBN 978-1-84935-064-8.
Preston, Paul (2006). The Spanish Civil War. Reaction, revolution & revenge. London: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-00-723207-9.
Thomas, Hugh (2003). The Spanish Civil War. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-101161-5.
Urquijo y Goitia, José Ramón de (2008). Gobiernos y ministros españoles en la edad contemporánea. Editorial CSIC - CSIC Press. ISBN 978-84-00-08737-1.

External links[]

Documents on Caballero from "Trabajadores: The Spanish Civil War through the eyes of organised labour", a digitised collection of more than 13,000 pages of documents from the archives of the British Trades Union Congress held in the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
Andy Durgan The Rise and Fall of Largo Cabellero, International Socialism, 18 (1983)
http://www.geneall.net/H/per_page.php?id=467749
Newspaper clippings about Francisco Largo Caballero in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Political offices
Preceded by Gabriel Maura Gamazo	Minister of Labour and Social Security 1931–1933	Succeeded by
Preceded by José Giral	Prime Minister of Spain 1936–1937	Succeeded by Juan Negrín
Preceded by Juan Hernández Saravia	Minister of War 1936–1937	Succeeded by Indalecio Prieto
Party political offices
Preceded by Remigio Cabello	President of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party 1932–1936	Succeeded by Ramón González Peña
Preceded by Remigio Cabello	Leader of the Socialist Group in the Congress of Deputies 1933–1936	Succeeded by Ramón González Peña

[FOOTNOTEThomas200339-1] Jump up to: ^a ^b ^c Thomas 2003, p. 39.

[FOOTNOTEBeevor200617-2] Beevor 2006, p. 17.

[FOOTNOTEBeevor200621-3] Beevor 2006, p. 21.

[4] Preston, Paul. The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform, Reaction and Revolution in the Spanish Second Republic. Routledge. New York. 1994. p. 81.

[FOOTNOTEBeevor200628-5] Beevor 2006, p. 28.

[FOOTNOTEBeevor200629–32-6] Beevor 2006, pp. 29–32.

[FOOTNOTEJackson1967206–208-7] Jackson 1967, pp. 206–208.

[8] "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 19 January 2010. Retrieved 20 July 2010.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

[FOOTNOTEPreston200684-9] Preston 2006, p. 84.

[FOOTNOTEThomas2003392–394-10] Thomas 2003, p. 392–394.

[FOOTNOTEJackson1967341-11] Jackson 1967, pp. 341.

[FOOTNOTEPaz201196-97-12] Paz 2011, p. 96-97.

[FOOTNOTEPreston2006256–258-13] Preston 2006, pp. 256–258.

[FOOTNOTEGraham2005162-14] Graham 2005, p. 162.

[FOOTNOTEUrquijo_y_Goitia2008129–130-15] Urquijo y Goitia 2008, p. 129–130.

[FOOTNOTEBeevor2006413-16] Beevor 2006, p. 413.

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show v t Prime ministers of Spain
Acting prime ministers shown in italics.
Queen Isabella II (1833–1868)	Martínez de la Rosa Toreno Álava Álvarez Mendizábal Istúriz Calatrava Espartero Bardají Heredia-Spínola Frías Alaix Pérez de Castro A. González Ferraz Cortázar Sancho Espartero Ferrer A. González Rodil J. M. López Gómez Becerra Olózaga González Bravo Narváez Miraflores Narváez Sotomayor Pacheco Salamanca García Goyena Narváez Clonard Bravo Murillo Roncali Lersundi Sartorius Mendigorría Rivas Espartero O'Donnell Narváez Armero Istúriz O'Donnell Arrazola Mon Narváez O'Donnell Narváez González Bravo Havana
Democratic Sexennium (1868–1874)	Madoz Serrano Prim Topete Serrano Ruiz Zorrilla Malcampo Sagasta Topete Serrano Mendigorría Ruiz Zorrilla Figueras Pi Salmerón Castelar Serrano Sierra Bullones Sagasta
The Restoration (1874–1931)	Cánovas Jovellar Martínez Campos Sagasta Posada Azcárraga Silvela Fernández-Villaverde Maura Montero Moret López Domínguez Vega de Armijo Canalejas García Prieto Romanones Dato Maura Sánchez de Toca Bugallal Sánchez-Guerra Primo de Rivera Berenguer Aznar-Cabañas
Second Republic (1931–1939)	Alcalá-Zamora Azaña Lerroux Martínez Barrio Samper Chapaprieta Portela Barcía Casares Martínez Barrio Giral Largo Negrín
Spain under Franco (1936–1975)	Franco Carrero Blanco Fernández-Miranda Arias
Since 1975	Arias Santiago Suárez Calvo-Sotelo F. González Aznar Zapatero Rajoy Sánchez

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