Juan Negrín

Juan Negrín (Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, February 3rd 1889 - Paris, November 12th 1956) is a physiologist and Spanish politician. From 1937 to 1945, he was chief of the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then government in exile.

Professor of physiology at the university, and researcher of reputation in this same discipline, it is regarded as one of the precursors of biochemistry. He had inter alia as pupils Severo Ochoa (only Spanish prize winner of the Nobel Prize of physiology or medicine) and Large Covián. From 1937 to 1945, he was chief of the government of the Second republics Spanish.

In September 1936, it is named Minister for Finance in the government of Largo Caballero. Member of PSOE, after the resignation of Largo Caballero on May 17th, 1937, the president of the Republic Manuel Azaña appoints it Prime Minister, with the hope to reinforce his authority vis-a-vis the trade unions and with the anarchists, while being combined with the middle-class and the middle-classes, putting thus fine at the revolutionary movement and setting up a true saving in war. All that with the intention to place the Spanish civil war within the framework of a European conflict of greater width which seemed to him imminent, even if the Accords of Munich had made disappear any hope of outside assistance définiticement.

It convainquit Azaña by allowing the transfer of part of the Treasury of the Bank of Spain Moscow in order to pay military equipment which the Republic was to buy with the Soviet Union, which required to be paid in advance. This measurement was the only possible alternative to the refusal of the democratic powers to sell weapons in Spain, refusal which rested on a Non-aggression pact whose Germany and Italy, rather paradoxically, were also signatories while supporting the Spanish nationalists actively.

On the military level, it launched a series of offensives which were a poor success (battles of Brunete, Belchite, Teruel and of Èbre.

Right before the fall of the Catalonia, he proposed during the meeting of the government with Figueres rendering with for only condition the life saves for overcome, but not managing to find an agreement he went in the center of Spain in February 1939 with for objective implementing the evacuation with same success that he had obtained in Catalonia, but the rebellion of Segismundo Casado returned the execution of this impossible plan.

He was president of the government in exile of the Republic until in 1945, and organized the service of assistance to the repatriates.

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