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