Spanish general who led the 1849 expedition to Gaeta to restore the Pope against the Roman Republic, later briefly prime minister
Born in Buenos Aires in 1809, the son of a naval officer, he and his brother Luis fought on the Isabelline side in the First Carlist War, and he belonged to the Moderate Party. Appointed captain general of Catalonia on 4 September 1848, he put down the rebel cells of the Second Carlist War there by early 1849. In May 1849 he was sent to Italy to restore the temporal power of Pius IX and overthrow the Roman Republic, leading a force of 4,000 Spanish soldiers deployed at Gaeta at the Pope's disposition. He later became minister of war and, in the crisis of July 1854, prime minister for a single day. Although he had always supported Isabella II, he backed the Revolution of 1868 and joined the Radical Democratic Party, retiring from politics in 1873. He died in Madrid in 1883.
Career timeline
- 1848Captain general of Catalonia
- 1849Commander of the Spanish expedition to the Papal States
- 1854Minister of war; prime minister for one day
The UGT worker-leader they called the Spanish Lenin, a prime minister broken between revolution and war
In November 1936 Largo Caballero appointed four CNT leaders to his cabinet: anarchists whose programme was the abolition of the state took ministerial office in one. One of them, the health minister Federica Montseny, was the first woman to hold a ministry in Spanish history.
A man who left school at seven, worked as a stucco plasterer and became a union leader. At the head of the UGT he was sentenced to life for the general strike of August 1917, and under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship he took a seat on the Council of State to keep the organization alive, a choice argued over for the rest of his life. As labour minister of the Second Republic he pushed through the eight-hour day in the countryside, and around the Asturias rising of 1934 he moved so far left that his supporters called him the Spanish Lenin. In September 1936 he became prime minister and war minister, and in November brought four CNT leaders into the cabinet, seating anarchists in a government for the first time; but he clashed continuously with the communists and the Soviet advisers over rebuilding a regular army and over the pace of the revolution. After the May Days of 1937 he refused to outlaw the POUM, lost his ministers and fell. In exile in France he was seized by the Gestapo and held in Sachsenhausen until the liberation of 1945.
Career timeline
- 1869Born to a poor family in Madrid; left school at seven and became a stucco plasterer
- 1890–1894Drawn into the UGT by a builders' strike; joined the PSOE in 1894
- 1917Sentenced to life for leading the August general strike; released the next year on election to parliament
- 1924–1930Councillor of State for labour under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, keeping the UGT alive at the cost of a lasting controversy
- 1925Became the leading figure of both the PSOE and the UGT after the death of Pablo Iglesias
- 1931–1933Labour minister of the Second Republic; pushed through the eight-hour day in the countryside and other labour laws
- 1934–1935Moved far left, called the Spanish Lenin; jailed after the failed Asturias rising of October and then acquitted
- 1936.09.04Took office as prime minister and minister of war
- 1936.11Brought four CNT ministers into the cabinet and moved the government to Valencia
- 1937.05.17Refused to outlaw the POUM after the May Days and was forced out of office
- 1937–1938Pushed out of the UGT leadership as well
- 1939Went into exile in France with the defeat of the Republic
- 1943–1945Seized by the Gestapo and held in Sachsenhausen concentration camp until the liberation
- 1946.03.23Died in Paris; his remains were returned to Madrid in 1978
PSOE right-wing leader, Speaker of the Cortes; joined Casado's coup, refused exile, and died in Franco's prison
"The great majority, the masses, they cannot leave, and I, who have always lived with the workers, will continue with them and with them I will stay. Whatever is their fate will be mine," to the socialist daily La Voz, March 1939
A Marxist revisionist who started as a philosophy professor in Madrid and succeeded Pablo Iglesias as leader of the PSOE and UGT in 1925. As Speaker of the Constituent Cortes (1931) he held to a moderate parliamentarism, and his opposition to the armed rising of October 1934 cost him his party base. During the Civil War he stayed in Madrid seeking a negotiated peace, and in March 1939 joined Colonel Casado's coup against Negrín, serving on the National Defence Council; but Franco demanded unconditional surrender. When every other council member fled, Besteiro refused, telling the socialist daily La Voz that he had always lived with the workers and would share their fate; a Francoist court martial sentenced him to life imprisonment and he died in Carmona prison.
Career timeline
- 1912Joined PSOE and UGT; appointed chair of Logic at Complutense University
- 1917Revolutionary general strike committee; sentenced to life imprisonment, amnestied 1918
- 1925–1931President of PSOE and UGT; collaborationist stance during Primo de Rivera dictatorship
- 1931–1933Speaker of the Constituent Cortes of the Second Spanish Republic
- 1934Resigned as UGT president after opposing the October armed rising
- 1937.05Republic's representative to George VI's coronation; met Anthony Eden seeking peace mediation
- 1939.03Joined Casado's coup; Foreign Affairs councillor on the National Defence Council
- 1939.03–1940.09Arrested by Franco's forces, court-martialed and sentenced to 30 years; died in Carmona prison
Mother who raised her daughter Hildegart as the “woman of the future” and then killed her
On 9 June 1933 she shot dead her sleeping daughter, who was breaking away from her plan; she never repented and died in a psychiatric hospital.
Born into a well-off liberal family in Ferrol, she educated herself on the utopian socialists in her father’s library. Raising her sister’s son Pepito Arriola into a musical prodigy confirmed her beliefs in education, reform and eugenics. After her father’s death she chose a father who could never claim the child and in 1914 bore her daughter Hildegart as the “model of the woman of the future” who would defend women’s rights. When the daughter plunged into politics and tried to become independent, she shot her dead in her sleep on 9 June 1933. Sentenced to 26 years, she spent most of them in the Ciempozuelos psychiatric hospital, where she died in 1955.
