Juan Negrín

Juan Negrín Lopez (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, February 3, 1887 – Paris, November 12, 1956) was a Spanish republican political figure during the Spanish Civil War.

A university professor of physiology, he was named Minister of Finance in September 1936 in the government of Francisco Largo Caballero.

In May 1937 Manuel Azaña named him President of the Government (Prime Minister), with the hope of fortifying the central power front to unions and anarchists, allying themselves with the bourgeoisie and middle-class, thus ending the revolutionary movement and create a war economy. All this was intended to connect the Spanish conflict with World War II, that he believed to be imminent, although the Munich pact definitively made all hope of outside aid vanish. On the military level he sent a series of offensives (Brunete, Belchite, Teruel and Ebro).

Before the fall of Catalonia he proposed, in the meeting of the Cortes in Figueres, capitulation with the sole condition of respecting the lives of the losers, but on not having been able to reach this goal, moved in February 1939 to the I Central Zone with the intention of achieving the evacuation with the same success with which it had been realized in Catalonia, but Segismundo Casado's rebellion frustrated this last plan.

Served as President of the Republic until 1945, and organized the S.E.R.E. to help republican exiles.

See also

+ Prime Minister of Spain