Manuel Portela Valladares

Manuel Portela Valladares (1912).

Manuel Portela Valladares (born January 31, 1867 in Pontevedra , † April 29, 1952 in Bandol ) was a Spanish politician and Prime Minister of Spain ( Presidente del Gobierno ) .

biography

Studies and professional career

After his father's death in 1877, he was taken into the family of an aunt as a foster child. Their financial prosperity enabled him to study at the Jesuit College of Camposancos in La Guardia (Pontevedra ) and to study law at the University of Santiago de Compostela , which he graduated in 1889.

He then lived in his native Pontevedra until 1889 , where he was not only editor of the daily Diario de Pontevedra , but also judge at the city court and dean of the law school. In 1898, at the age of only 31, he became head of the land registry ( Registrador de la Propiedad ) in Madrid .

Deputy, Minister and Period of the Primo de Riveras dictatorship

In the following years he got into politics through the influence of Eugenio Montero Ríos and began his political career on September 10, 1905 with the election as a member of the Congress of Deputies ( Congresso de los Diputados ), where he defended his interests with a few interruptions until October 1933 of the constituency of Lugo .

In 1909 he was among other intellectuals and politicians co-founder of the Agricultural League of Galicia ( Liga Agraria de Acción Gallega ), with whose chairman Basilio Álvarez he was a close friend. As a confidante of Prime Minister José Canalejas Méndez , he was appointed civil governor of Barcelona in 1910. It was he who appointed him two years later to the position of public prosecutor at the Supreme Court ( Tribunal Supremo ).

On September 3, 1923 he was appointed Development Minister ( Ministro de Fomento ) in the government of Manuel García Prieto as part of a cabinet reshuffle . However, he could only hold this office for twelve days and lost his ministerial office with the beginning of the military dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera on September 15, 1923.

In the following years he withdrew from government life, but in 1924 he was the founder of the daily newspaper El Pueblo Gallego , which appeared in Vigo and was a mouthpiece for republican intellectuals and Galician nationalists ( Galleguistas ) to demand a restoration of political life. In 1930 he was also one of the most important representatives of the republican intellectuals and Galleguistas of the time, one of the signatories of the Barrantes Pact, in which the need for the autonomy of Galicia was required.

Through his marriage to the Catalan noblewoman Clotilde Puig i Mir, he acquired the title of Count ( Conde ) of Brias in 1931 .

Promotion to Prime Minister during the Second Republic

In addition to his work as a member of the Congress of Deputies, Prime Minister Alejandro Lerroux appointed him Governor General of Catalonia in March 1935 and then Minister of the Interior ( Ministro de Gobernación ) on April 3, 1935 . He held this office until September 25, 1935.

On December 14, 1935, he was appointed Prime Minister of Spain ( Presidente del Gobierno ) of the Second Republic by President Niceto Alcalá Zamora himself . During his term of office, which lasted until February 19, 1936, he again took over the office of Interior Minister. In addition, he was from January 25 to February 3, 1936 during the absence of the incumbent foreign minister ( Ministro de Estado ). After the victory of the Frente Popular in the general parliamentary elections of February 16, 1936, in which he was re-elected as a representative of the constituency of Pontevedra as a member of the Congress of Deputies, he had to hand over the office of Prime Minister to Manuel Azaña . As a member of parliament, he was also a representative of Freemasonry .

Even after the civil war began in July 1936, Portela remained a loyal supporter of the Second Republic and a credible representative of its liberal and reform-oriented ideology. However, after the revolt in Barcelona on July 18, 1936, he initially went into exile in Nice , but returned to Spain the following year, where he offered his services to Prime Minister Juan Negrín López in his republican government. In October 1937 he again took part in the meetings of the united Cortes in Valencia , but in 1939, towards the end of the civil war, he had to flee to France again, where he was soon arrested by the Gestapo . Despite the request of the new government of Francisco Franco for his release, this was refused by the German occupying forces.

After the end of the Second World War he stayed in France, where he later died in Bandol near Marseille .

Publications

• Ante el estatuto. Unificación y diversificación de las nacionalidades , 1932 (Before the Statute: Union and Diversification of Nations)
• Dietario de dos guerras (1936-1950): notas, polémicas y correspondencia de un centrista español , 1951 (Diary of the two wars (1936–1950): notes, polemics and correspondence of a Spanish centrist)
• Memorias dentro del drama español , 1952 (memories within the Spanish drama)
• A Nosa Terra e Nós. Escritos en galego , 1992 edition (To our country and us. Writings in Galician)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ List of Members of Parliament from 1810 to 1977
2. ↑ List of Spanish nobility titles - Conde de Brias ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ^ El Triunfo del Frente Popular
4. ^ Anti-Revolutionary , article in TIME Magazine of February 24, 1936
5. ↑ Grand Lodge of Spain 1923–1936 ( Memento of November 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ 1,000 Miles , article in TIME Magazine October 11, 1937

Web links

• Biography on the homepage of the Spanish Prime Ministers ( Memento of October 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (Spanish)
• The governments during the reign of Alfonso XIII. (1902-1931)
• Governments during the Second Republic 1931-1939

predecessor	Office	successor
Joaquín Chapaprieta Torregrosa	Prime Minister of Spain 1935–1936	Manuel Azaña