Julio Álvarez del Vayo

Julio Álvarez del Vayo (Villaviciosa de Odón, Madrid, 1890 - Geneve, Switzerland, 1975) was a Spanish Socialist politician, journalist and writer.

He studied Law at the Universities of Madrid and Valladolid and he did a postdoctoral stay at the London School of Economics. He joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) very young and he opposed to the collaboration of that party with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930). He wrote for newspapers "La Nación" of Argentina, "El Liberal" and "El Sol" of Spain, and "The Guardian" of Britain. He visited as journalist United States, the European fronts during First World War and the Soviet Union. In 1930 he conspired for an armed uprising against the Monarchy. When the Second Republic was proclaimed he was appointed ambassador to Mexico and to the Soviet Union, and later he was elected member of the Parliament. He followed the revolutionary wing of Largo Caballero.

During the Civil War he hold several political offices on the Republican side: he was twice minister of Foreign Affairs, delegate to League of Nations and commissar and general of the Army. After the Francoist conquest of Catalonia and while the majority of the Republican leaders decided to remain in France, he returned to the Republican zone and led the last combats against the Francoist troops. He fled on airplane from Monovar, Alicante.

He lived exiled in Mexico, United States and Switzerland. He radicalized his political positions and was expelled from PSOE. He founded Unión Socialista Española, very close to the Spanish Communist Party, which integrated into the Revolutionary Anti-Fascist Patriotic Front (FRAP).

Writings

*"La nueva Rusia. En camión por la estepa. Las dos revoluciones, siluetas...", Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1926
*"La senda roja", Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1928
*"La guerra comenzó en España: lucha por la libertad", Mexico City: Séneca, 1940
*"Freedom's battle", New York: Knopf, 1940
*"The last optimist", London: Putnam, 1950
*"Reportaje en China. Presente y futuro de un gran pueblo", Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1958
*"China vence", Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1964
*"The March of Socialism", New York: Hill and Wang, 1974
*"Give me combat", Boston: Little Brown, 1973 (memoir)