The physiologist trained in Leipzig who sent the Republic's gold to Moscow and chose to fight to the end as its last prime minister
The Thirteen Points he put to Franco in May 1938: full Spanish independence, a government chosen by universal suffrage, regional autonomy, freedom of conscience, land reform, and no reprisals for acts of war. Franco''s answer was unconditional surrender.
A physiologist turned PSOE politician. He studied medicine at Kiel and Leipzig, became professor of physiology in Madrid at twenty-nine and built the laboratory that trained the future Nobel laureate Severo Ochoa, joined the PSOE in 1929 and entered parliament in 1931. As finance minister from September 1936 he moved the national gold reserve to Cartagena and signed the decision to place it in Soviet hands, and after the Barcelona May Days he became prime minister in May 1937, centralizing the Popular Army under the slogan that to resist is to win. He leaned on the communists and the Soviet advisers because under Western non-intervention there was nowhere else to buy arms, and was called a puppet of Moscow for it for the rest of his life. His Thirteen Points of May 1938 were an attempt to negotiate; Franco would accept only unconditional surrender, and in March 1939 Colonel Casado''s coup drove him out of Spain. Expelled from the PSOE in 1946, he was rehabilitated by the party only in 2008.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1892Born in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands to a well-off Catholic family
- 1906–1915Studied medicine and physiology at Kiel and Leipzig; doctorate in medicine 1912
- 1922Professor of physiology in Madrid at twenty-nine, founding the laboratory that trained Severo Ochoa
- 1929–1931Joined the PSOE and was elected deputy for Las Palmas with the founding of the Second Republic
- 1936.09Finance minister in the Largo Caballero cabinet; moved the gold reserve to Cartagena
- 1936.10Signed the decision to place 510 tonnes of gold in Soviet hands, the so-called Moscow Gold
- 1937.05.17Became prime minister after the Barcelona May Days: one war, one army, one command
- 1938.04–1939.03Also defence minister; ran the Ebro offensive under the slogan to resist is to win
- 1938.05Issued the Thirteen Points as a basis for negotiation; Franco refused
- 1938.09–10Announced the unilateral withdrawal of the International Brigades at the League of Nations and presided over the Barcelona farewell parade
- 1939.03Driven out of Spain by Colonel Casado's coup, into exile in France
- 1939–1945Prime minister of the Republican government in exile; organized the SERE refugee relief service
- 1946Expelled from the PSOE; rehabilitated by the party in 2008
- 1956.11.12Died of a heart attack in Paris; buried at Père Lachaise
Related historical events
The gold transfer and its controversy
On 13 September 1936 a confidential decree of the Ministry of Finance, initiated by Negrín as finance minister, authorized moving the Bank of Spain's gold reserves out of Madrid. The decree obliged the government to answer to the Cortes for the operation, a clause that was never fulfilled. From 14 September the gold was taken under heavy guard to Cartagena, and on 15 October Negrín and Largo Caballero decided to send it on to the Soviet Union. Over three nights from 22 October the boxes were loaded onto ships bound for Odessa and were deposited in Moscow's state depository on 5 November: 510 tonnes, 72.6 per cent of the Bank of Spain's reserves.
Assessments of the decision still diverge. Negrín argued that with Franco's Army of Africa closing on Madrid the gold had to be put somewhere safe and turned into arms; Largo Caballero likewise cited the impossibility of buying from the West under non-intervention. Against this, Araquistáin, of the same party, suspected Soviet coercion, and critics held that the transfer violated the law governing the Bank's property and the convertibility of its notes. Who first proposed sending the reserves abroad is also unsettled: some attribute it to the Soviet agent Stashevski, others to Negrín himself. The final receipt of 5 February 1937 vested ownership in the Republican government rather than the Bank, left it free to dispose of the gold, and released the USSR from responsibility for its use. Negrín signed nineteen sell orders between February 1937 and April 1938 to buy arms and matériel, and the funds passed through a Soviet-owned bank in Paris to purchases elsewhere. Historians with access to the records believe the Soviets did not defraud the Republic in these transactions, though every cost and commission was charged to it, and some argue the ruble and dollar exchange rates were manipulated to inflate arms prices. When the gold ran out, the Republican treasury's credit ran out with it.
The so-called Negrín dossier belongs to this story's aftermath. Acting on his father's instructions, Rómulo Negrín finally handed an incomplete set of documents on the gold's administration to Franco's government, after refusing for more than fifteen years to give them to the exiled Republican government, in order to show that the gold had been spent entirely on the war effort. The exile community was deeply wounded by the gesture, yet Franco's authorities accepted the papers and kept their contents quiet, so the propaganda myth of Spanish gold stolen and squandered in Moscow survived intact.