Indalecio Prieto

Indalecio Prieto
Prieto in 1936
Minister of Finance
In office 14 April 1931 – 16 December 1931
President	Manuel Azaña
Succeeded by	Trifón Gómez
Minister of Public Works
In office 16 December 1931 – 12 September 1933
President	Manuel Azaña
Minister of the Navy and Air Force
In office 4 September 1936 – 17 May 1937
President	Francisco Largo Caballero
Minister of the National Defence of Spain
In office 17 May 1937 – 5 April 1938
President	Juan Negrín
President of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
In office 1935–1948
Personal details
Born	30 April 1883 Oviedo, Spain
Died	11 February 1962 (aged 78) Mexico City, Mexico
Nationality	Spanish
Political party	PSOE

Indalecio Prieto Tuero (30 April 1883 – 11 February 1962) was a Spanish politician, a minister and one of the leading figures of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the years before and during the Second Spanish Republic.

Born in Oviedo in 1883, his father died when he was six years old; his mother moved him to Bilbao in 1891. From a young age, he survived by selling magazines in the street. He eventually obtained work as a stenographer at the daily newspaper La Voz de Vizcaya. This led to a position as a copy editor and later a journalist at the rival daily El Liberal. He eventually became the director and owner of the newspaper.

In 1899 at the age of 16, he had joined the PSOE. As a journalist in the first decade of the 20th century, Prieto became a leading figure of socialism in the Basque Country.

Spain's neutrality in World War I greatly benefited Spanish industry and commerce, but those benefits were not reflected in the workers' salaries. The war period was one of great social unrest, culminating on August 13, 1917 in a revolutionary general strike. Due to the government's fear of unrest like that of the February Revolution that year in Russia (the October Revolution was still to come), it used the military to put down the general strike. Members of the strike committee were arrested in Madrid. Having been involved in organizing the strike, Prieto fled to France before he could be arrested.

He did not return until April 1918, by which time he had been elected to the Spanish Congress of Deputies. Very critical of the actions of the government and army during the Rif War or "War of Melilla" (1919–1926), Prieto spoke out strongly in the Congress after the Battle of Annual (1921). He also addressed the likely responsibility of the king in the imprudent military actions of general Manuel Fernández Silvestre in the Melilla command zone.

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