Indalecio Prieto y el movimiento socialista

Indalecio Prieto was one of the most important socialist politicians of the so-called "second generation", the one who succeeded the founder of the PSOE, Pablo Iglesias. Prieto embodied the values of democratic socialism like few Spanish socialists of the first half of the 20th century. His was a political project - of democratic affirmation, defense of pluralism and social reform - intimately linked to the idea of a republican regime. The reform of the State and social improvement through the establishment of a true republican democracy: that was the political objective of Prieto throughout his life. But his reformist label did not prevent him from launching into the revolution, in October 1934, leaving the Socialist Party and the Republic itself battered. Prieto foolishly substituted -he himself said- the reformist policy for the revolution with a socialist sense, acknowledging years later his guilt and that of the Socialist Party, for having abandoned and fought the Republic, no matter how justified the fear of it might have been. the CEDA. If the previous political and parliamentary positions "of the Socialist Party had been" maintained by means of suffrage, "he proclaimed already in exile," and if politics had been pursued, arguing in parliament, the "damages" of the civil war would not have arisen, nor the sufferings of exile. Having understood it better than any other socialist, he gave his best, during the long years of exile, to achieve concord among Spaniards. His formula for a "plebiscite" that would determine the type of regime that they wanted to give themselves -as the first milestone of a national reconciliation in Spain- was a direct antecedent of our Democratic Transition, from 1975 onwards.