Youth and formation Born in
Vegadeo,
province of Oviedo, on March 5, 1881. Doctor in Law and lawyer, he was the brother of
Camilo Barcia Trelles, professor of International Law, who had
Adolfo Miaja de la Muela as a disciple. From an early age he stood out in the journalistic field. Founder of the magazine
La Joven España, he would collaborate with newspapers such as
El Correo,
El Liberal or
La Libertad and also served as correspondent of several foreign newspapers in Spain. Barcia, of firm
Europeanist convictions and favorable to the
Allies in the course of the
World War I, would publish during the conflict a good number of articles and chronicles in
El Liberal, newspaper of which he would also become director in 1914.
Beginnings in politics In his youth Barcia was a member of the circle of friends of the politician
Segismundo Moret, a prominent member of the
Liberal Party. Under the influence of Moret and
Gumersindo de Azcárate, he ended up militating in the
Reformist Party of
Melquíades Álvarez. As a member of the Spanish
Cortes he was firmly against the Antiterrorist Act pushed in 1908 by then-PM
Antonio Maura. For the
elections of 1914 he presented his candidacy for deputy in Cortes for the Almería district of
Vera; he did so presenting himself under the initials of the Reformist Party and with the clear support of some notables of this formation in Almería However, he was not elected deputy. In the
elections of 1916 he would obtain a deputy seat for the district of
Vera, and later he would revalidate the seat in the elections of
1918,
1919,
1920 and
1923. During his time in the Cortes he would stand out especially for his interventions on foreign policy. After the establishment of the
Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera he retired from active politics, devoting himself to his profession as a lawyer. The refusal of Melquíades Álvarez to criticize the dictatorship would lead Augusto Barcia to distance himself from his former political godfather.
Second Republic In 1931, with the advent of the
Second Republic, he returned to politics. In the
elections to the Constituent Courts of that year he ran as a deputy for the Almería circumscription, but was not elected. Despite this failure, he played an important role at the national level during these years. In 1931 the government appointed him president of the Consejo Superior Bancario ("Higher Banking Council") and a year later he was appointed representative of Spain to the
League of Nations in
Geneva. After a period of approximation, in 1933 he joined
Republican Action (AR), the party of
Manuel Azaña. Thanks to Barcia's influence, the
Diario de Almería became the provincial organ of the Republican Action party. With a view to the
November 1933 elections, he forged an alliance between Republican Action and
Lerroux's
Radical Party in the province of Almería, managing to obtain a seat. Barcia was one of the few deputies that Republican Action obtained, which suffered a general defeat in the elections. Faced with this situation, AR would join with the
Galician Republicans and the
independent radical-socialists to form a new party,
Republican Left (IR), a formation in which Augusto Barcia would also join. Within the Almeria provincial organization of IR he became its main leader. He would defend
Lluís Companys and other members of the
Generalitat of Catalonia for their participation in the
proclamation of the Catalan State in October 1934. In the
elections of February 1936 he was part of the
Popular Front candidates for Almería, being the most voted candidate -with 68,175 votes- and managing to revalidate his deputy's seat. After the victory obtained by the Popular Front coalition, on February 19 he was appointed
Minister of State in the cabinet presided over by Manuel Azaña. Between May 11 and 13 he would assume the post of President of the Council of Ministers, after the resignation of Azaña -
who had been elected President of the Republic-. He would be succeeded at the head of the government by
Santiago Casares Quiroga, maintaining, however, the post of Minister of State. After the
Civil War, in July 1936, he assumed the post of Minister of the Interior in the very brief government headed by
Diego Martínez Barrio. He would again hold the portfolio of State in the cabinet presided over by
José Giral, leaving in September 1936. He was appointed
Spanish ambassador to Uruguay, although he would not assume the post due to the rupture of relations between the two countries. Although he remained in the background, he attended the meetings that the Republican Cortes held in October 1937 and August 1938. As the war progressed, he would serve as advisor to the Spanish Embassy in Paris and as Spanish ambassador to the
Soviet Union.
Exile and last years Seeing the war irretrievably lost, in 1939 he left Europe and moved to Latin America, settling in Buenos Aires. His departure into exile was followed by
repression on the part of
Franco's dictatorship. The Special Tribunal for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism sentenced him to thirty years imprisonment and absolute disqualification from practicing his profession, while the
National Tribunal for Political Responsibilities imposed a fine of twenty-five million pesetas and the confiscation of all his assets. It was even proposed that he should lose his Spanish nationality. Since 1941 he was president of the Patronato Hispano-Argentino de Cultura, developing a feverish activity as a writer and lecturer.21 In parallel, he would also collaborate actively with the Republican institutions in exile: he was part of the central board of
Acción Republicana Española, at the same time he served as delegate in Argentina of the
Junta Española de Liberación. After the
Second World War, he attended in Mexico City the meeting of the Republican Courts in exile. In August 1945 he became Minister of Finance of the
government-in-exile presided over by
José Giral, a position he would hold until August 1947. He died in Buenos Aires on June 19, 1961. == Private life ==