Moderate in his positions at the beginning of his political life, he advocated maintaining a degree of UGT cooperation with the dictatorial government of General
Miguel Primo de Rivera, which permitted the union to continue functioning under his military dictatorship (which lasted from 1923 to 1930). While he was in the position of Councilor of State for Labor, Largo Caballero refused an invitation to a palace ball, having accepted a position in government without wishing to demonstrably support the regime. This cooperation was the start of Largo Caballero's political conflict with
Indalecio Prieto, who opposed all collaboration with Primo de Rivera. Largo Caballero was Minister of Labor Relations between 1931 and 1933 in the first governments of the
Second Spanish Republic, headed by
Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, and in that of his successor
Manuel Azaña. Largo Caballero attempted to improve the conditions of landless labourers () in the rural south. On 28 April 1931 he introduced a decree of municipal boundaries to prevent the importation of foreign labour while there remained unemployed workers within the municipality. In May he established mixed juries () to arbitrate in agrarian labour disputes, and introduced an eight-hour working day in the countryside. Alongside these measures, a decree on obligatory cultivation prevented owners from using their land however they wanted. He enjoyed great popularity among the masses of workers, who saw their own austere existences reflected in his way of life. Reversing his stance on collaborationism, in the summer of 1933 he argued "to accomplish socialist aims in a bourgeoise democracy is impossible". In the elections of 19 November 1933, the
right-wing Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA) won power in Spain, beginning the period called the Black Biennium by the left. The government, nominally led by the centrist
Alejandro Lerroux of the
Radical Republican Party, was dependent on CEDA's parliamentary support. Responding to this reversal of fortune, Largo abandoned his moderate positions and became more openly far left. In the January 3, 1934 edition of
El Socialista, the PSOE newspaper, he wrote "Harmony? No!
Class war! Hatred for the criminal bourgeoise to the death!" A few weeks later, the PSOE compiled a new platform that called for the nationalization of all land, dissolution of all religious orders and the confiscation of their property, and the dissolution of the army, to be replaced by socialist militias. According to Angel Smith, Largo Caballero's radicalism was "almost purely rhetorical" and had the damaging effect of frightening right-wingers while not meaningfully preparing for a revolution. After the
Popular Front won the
elections in February 1936, president Manuel Azaña proposed that Prieto join the government, but Largo blocked these attempts at collaboration between PSOE and the Republican government. Largo dismissed fears of a military coup, and predicted that, were it to happen, a general strike would defeat it, opening the door to the workers' revolution. In the event, the coup attempt by the colonial army and the right came on 17 July 1936. Largo Caballero was a proponent of arming workers at the outset of the war, saying "A government that refuses to arm its workers is a fascist government". While not immediately successful, further actions by rebellious army units sparked the
Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), in which the republic was ultimately defeated and destroyed.
Prime Minister of Spain . A few months into the civil war, after the
Republican Left Party government of
José Giral resigned on 4 September 1936, President
Manuel Azaña asked Largo Caballero to form a new government. This resulted in the creation of a broader-based
Popular Front cabinet. Largo Cabellero served as
prime minister and also took the post of
minister of war. Besides conducting the war, he also focused on maintaining military discipline and government authority within the Republic. On 4 November 1936 Largo Caballero persuaded the anarchist
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT; "National Confederation of Labour") to join the government, with four members assigned to junior ministries including Justice, Health and Trade. The decision was controversial with the CNT members. Throughout his tenure in office the once-radicalised Largo Caballero became more and more disenchanted with his earlier flirtations with the radical left and communists during the
Black Biennium. When diplomatic recognition was established with the USSR in 1936, the exchange of ambassadors left Largo Caballero with Soviet ambassador
Marcel Rosenberg, who according to Caballerist PSOE member
Luis Araquistáin in his memoirs, “acted like a Russian viceroy in Spain.” On one occasion PSOE member
Gines Ganga wrote of an incident witnessed by numerous people where Largo Caballero, showing Rosenberg and Communist-sympathetic foreign minister
Julio Álvarez del Vayo the door at a heated meeting, yelled:Get out! Get out! You must learn, Señor Ambassador, that Spaniards may be poor and need help from abroad, but we are sufficiently proud not to accept that a foreign ambassador should try to impose his will on the head of the Spanish government. Largo Caballero also found himself under attack from the Communists when he was forced to accept the removal, to appease them, of his favourite José Asencio Torrado from the post of undersecretary of war after the military failure of February 1937 of the fall of
Málaga, according to Burnett Bolloten. He further antagonised the Communists when he attempted to revoke from del Vayo, who was also Comissariat General of the People's Army, the right of naming political commissars. The
Barcelona May Days of 3 to 8 May 1937 led to a governmental crisis that forced Largo Caballero to resign on 17 May 1937. His attempted defence of the
POUM, one of the parties involved in the May Days, led to the opposition of various moderate pro-centralisation PSOE ministers like Indalecio Prieto and Jose Giral, as well as the Communists, who seized the opportunity to walk out with their colleagues on Largo Caballero, therefore crippling his government.
Juan Negrín, also a member of the PSOE, was appointed prime minister in his stead. For the rest of the war Caballero was out of office, writing to express his opinions in his publication . He openly sided with Prime Minister
Juan Negrín and Prieto against Communist hegemony in the army and security forces. Largo Cabellero's cabinet, formed on 4 September 1936 and reshuffled on 4 November 1936, consisted of:
Exile and death Upon the defeat of the Republic in 1939, he fled to France. Arrested during the
German occupation of France, he was imprisoned in the
Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp from 1943-1945, with the liberation of the camps at the end of the war. He died in exile in Paris in 1946; his remains were returned to Madrid in 1978 after Franco's death in 1975. == Legacy ==