Alejandro Lerroux

Alejandro Lerroux García (4 March 1864, in La Rambla, Córdoba – 25 June 1949, in Madrid) was a Spanish politician who was the leader of the Radical Republican Party. He served as Prime Minister three times from 1933 to 1935 and held several cabinet posts as well. A highly charismatic politician, he was distinguished by his demagogical and populist political style.

Founder and leader of the Radical Republican Party (PRR), he was a controversial politician from the beginning, being especially known for his demagogic rhetoric. With a workerist, anticlerical discourse and diametrically opposed to the incipient Catalan nationalism, during his first political stage he became a prominent political leader in Barcelona. Later he would adopt more moderate positions, having a prominent role in the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic. Faced with the Manuel Azaña governments during the so-called "reformist" biennium, from September 1933 he would assume the presidency of the Council of Ministers and became one of the main arbiters of the political situation during the conservative biennium of 1934–1935.

His turn to the right, however, led his party to suffer several splits; His image was also badly damaged among the public by a succession of corruption scandals that became public at the end of 1935. After the collapse of the Radical Party in the 1936 elections, Lerroux disappeared from the political scene. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he went into exile in Portugal. Provided by Wikipedia