Largo Caballero

Although Spanish socialism has always reserved a place of honor for Pablo Iglesias, its founder, Francisco Largo Caballero was the most relevant and influential labor leader in Spain in the last century. Largo Caballero appeared as the true heir to Iglesias. Archetype of mass leader, trade unionist, politician, minister and president of the Government, promoter and maintainer of corporate projects during fifty years of militancy, the culminating moment of his career came in the 1930s, already at an advanced age. Largo Caballero's personality and performance were always complex, multifaceted, and even contradictory. He had to live turbulent times in the front line of politics: the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the Republic and the civil war. His leadership and his decisions have been widely criticized and his figure, frequently misrepresented, has often elicited adverse opinions, with few but notable exceptions. This book is neither a vindication of his historical role nor a hagiography of him. But a rigorous history can only be based on the authentic instruments of historiography: documentation and argumentation. That has been the extraordinary task of Julio Arostegui: clearing myths and prejudices and searching for the historical truth. The result is "another" Largo Caballero, quite different from the one used in literature and one of the most faithful portraits of a fundamental figure in the history of the 20th century. Because to understand the present you have to study the past.