1. Indalecio Prieto Tuero was a Spanish politician, a minister and one of the leading figures of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in the years before and during the Second Spanish Republic.
18 Facts About Indalecio Prieto
1. 2.
Less radical than Francisco Largo Caballero, Prieto served as minister under his government during the Spanish Civil War.
3.
Indalecio Prieto eventually obtained work as a stenographer at the daily newspaper La Voz de Vizcaya, which led to a position as a copy editor and later a journalist at the rival daily El Liberal.
4.
Indalecio Prieto eventually became the director and owner of the newspaper.
5.
Indalecio Prieto did not return until April 1918, when he had been elected to the Spanish Congress of Deputies.
6.
Indalecio Prieto addressed the likely responsibility of the king in the imprudent military actions of General Manuel Fernandez Silvestre in the Melilla command zone.
7.
Indalecio Prieto was opposed to Francisco Largo Caballero's line of partial collaboration with the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera.
8.
In that matter, Indalecio Prieto was supported by Largo Caballero's wing of the party, as the latter believed that the fall of the monarchy was necessary so that socialism could rise to power.
9.
Indalecio Prieto gave a thrilling campaign speech in Cuenca on 1 May 1936, prior to the 3 May repetition of the February 1936 election in the district in which the Popular Front would face among the right-wing rival Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera and, after the resignation of General Francisco Franco as candidate, Manuel Casanova.
10.
Indalecio Prieto brought Regenerationist memories and proposed Keynesian measures to develop the domestic market of the country.
11.
In words directed towards the firebrand faction of Largo Cabrello, Indalecio Prieto asked for moderation, discipline and the disregarding of revolutionary excesses that would put the democratic government in peril.
12.
The speech in which Indalecio Prieto displayed a deep sense of patriotism was celebrated by the republican press, and it was received well even by Jose Antonio, then in prison.
13.
On 31 May 1936, Indalecio Prieto was shot at a socialist rally in Ecija.
14.
Saddened, Indalecio Prieto is recorded as expressing his pessimism with these words: "with this brutality we have lost the war".
15.
However, historian Julius Ruiz argues that Indalecio Prieto was not necessarily a steadfast moderate, as he held that Republican victory would require stripping the Church, capitalists and army of their power as they were deemed collectively responsible for the rebellion.
16.
In September 1936, after the fall of Talavera de la Reina, in Toledo Province, to the rebels, Largo Caballero became the head of the government, and Indalecio Prieto became Minister of Marine and Air.
17.
Indalecio Prieto finally left the government after the March 1938 defeat on the Aragon front after an escalating dispute with the communists.
18.
Indalecio Prieto refrained from active political life for the remainder of the war, exiling himself to Mexico.