Francisco Largo Caballero
Francisco Largo Caballero (1869-1946) was a Spanish politician and trade unionist. He was vice-president of the Socialist Party (PSOE) and of the Workers' General Union (UGT). At the beginning of his political life he defended moderate positions.He was Minister of Labor Relations between 1931 and 1933, in the first government of the Second Spanish Republic. He abandoned his moderate positions and became the leader of the left (Marxist and revolutionary wing) of the UGT and the PSOE. He was one of the leaders of the armed rising of workers of October 1934. He defended the pact and the alliance with the other workers' political parties and trade unions, like the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and the anarchist trade union, the Workers' National Confederation (CNT). After the Popular Front won the elections in February 1936, president Manuel Azaña proposed the socialist leader Indalecio Prieto to join the government, but Largo Caballero blocked these attempts of collaboration between PSOE and the Republican government. Largo Caballero despised the fears of a coup, and predicted that, were it to happen, a general strike would defeat it, opening the door to the workers' revolution.
A PSOE congress in autumn 1936 would try to bridge the Prieto and the Largo Caballero factions, but in 18 July, the colonial army and the right launched a coup, starting the Civil War (1936-1939). During the war, he was Prime Minister between September of 1936 and May of 1937. He fled to France in 1939, as General Francisco Franco took power. Arrested during the German occupation of France, he spent most of World War II imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. He died in exile in Paris in 1946.