Julian Besteiro

Julián Besteiro
Julián Besteiro (circa 1931)
President of the Congress of Deputies of Spain
In office 14 July 1931 – 9 October 1933
President	Manuel Azaña
Member of the Congress of Deputies
In office 13 March 1918 – 15 September 1923
Member of the Congress of Deputies
In office 4 July 1931 – 2 February 1937
President of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE)
In office 1925–1932
Succeeded by	Francisco Largo Caballero
President of the General Union of Workers (UGT)
In office 1925–1934
Succeeded by	Anastasio de Gracia
Personal details
Born	21 September 1870 Madrid, Spain
Died	27 September 1940 Carmona, Spain
Nationality	Spanish
Political party	Republican Union Party, Radical Party, PSOE

Julián Besteiro Fernández (21 September 1870 – 27 September 1940) was a Spanish socialist politician, elected to the Cortes Generales and in 1931 as Speaker of the Constituent Cortes of the Spanish Republic. He also was elected several times to the town council of Madrid. During the same period, he was a university professor of philosophy and logic, and dean of the department at the University of Madrid.

Born in Madrid, he was educated in the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, and studied in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Madrid, as well as at the Sorbonne in 1896, the Universities of Munich, Berlin and Leipzig in 1909-1910. In 1908, he joined the Partido Radical (Radical Party) established by Alejandro Lerroux.

He became a member of the Agrupación Socialista Madrileña (the socialist circle in Madrid) in 1912. That year he was offered the Chair of Fundamental Logic in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Madrid. Soon after, Besteiro became a member of Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) trade union, and of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). In 1913 he married Dolores Cebrián, a professor of physics and natural science at the teachers' training college in Toledo.