Julian Zugazagoitia

JULI? N Zugazagoitia MENDIETA

(1899-1940)

"... One of the lessons I have learned from the

war is the cruelest agree to be the

most cowardly when duty is hard. "

Julian Zugazagoitia.

THE VOICE SILENCED BY THE FRANCO

We will not reproduce the list of novelists who cultivated the social novel in the first half of the twentieth century, it suffices to note that recent studies on the subject set its inception in 1927, when he published his first novels Julian and Joaquin Arderius Zugazagoitia.

Tragic fate befell the novelist, biographer, journalist and politician Julian Zugazagoitia Basque, which on the Nazi occupation of France was betrayed in his exile in Paris, was arrested by the Gestapo on July 27, 1940 and handed over to Franco's police along with other exiles, among whom were the socialist journalist Francisco Cruz Salido, the anarchist Joan Peiro, Minister of Industry under Largo Caballero, the stage manager Cheriff Cipriano Rivas, brother of Azaña, and the leader of Republican Left of Catalonia and President Catalan Lluis Companys. After summary trials were all sentenced to death and pardoned except Rivas was still on death row, the others were executed. At dawn on November 9, 1940, Julian Zugazagoitia, with thirteen others, was shot in the walls of the cemetery east of Madrid.

The most important work is Zugazagoitia History of the War in Spain (1940), published in Argentina, later reprinted under the title War and vicissitudes of the Spanish, extremely honest testimony of one of the foreground figures of the Party Spanish Socialist Workers amazing objectivity and the date and the conditions under which the book was written.

Julian Zugazagoitia Mendieta was born in Bilbao on February 5, 1899 and was assassinated in Madrid on November 9, 1940. He was known in some circles as Zuga and used the pseudonyms Julian Fermin and Mendieta. The son of a socialist metalworker, grew up in a socialist, and twenty years was president of Socialist Youth of Bilbao. Already in 1917 went to jail for supporting the strike movement Bilbao. In 1921 he became director of the weekly Class Struggle, from which he attacked the Communist tenets. In 1924, the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera was sentenced to five years of exile in Santona, where he began his literary career. He was elected alderman of the City of Bilbao's historic election on April 12, 1931. In the June elections of that year to Constituent Cortes of the Second Spanish Republic was elected deputy for the province of Badajoz. From 1932 to 1937 was editor of El Socialista. In the last elections of the Second Republic was elected by the province of Vizcaya. In the first government of Juan Negrin, was interior minister from May 1937 to April 1938.

In 1937 participated in the II International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture organized by the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals. After ceasing to minister served as general secretary of the Ministry of Defense until the end of the war provoked by the military rebellion of General Franco. During the war contributed to the humane treatment of prisoners of war and helped save the lives of writers Wenceslao Fernández Flórez and Rafael Sánchez Mazas, the Falangist and Raimundo Fernandez Cuesta. Once the war began to go into exile and settled in Paris, until his arrest by the Gestapo.

Zugazagoitia published articles in major publications of the time. In addition to exercising the leadership of the Socialist PSOE organ of expression, was editor of El Liberal of Bilbao, owned by Indalecio Prieto, and contributor to La Vanguardia, The Flood and The Socialist Barcelona, ​​pictures of Madrid, Oviedo Feed Buenos Aires Vanguard, among others. In 1927, the magazine founded in Bilbao Socialist Working Papers.

Among the works of Zugazagoitia highlight: A heroic life. Pablo Iglesias (1925), the first biography of the founder of PSOE and the UGT, published in the same year of his death, then write a second draft Pablo Iglesias: From his life and his work (1931), and later, a third Pablo Iglesias: Life and works of a socialist workers (1935), A humble life: Meabe Thomas (1927), an anonymous life (1927), his first novel social, Pedernales: Itinerary sentimental school colony (1929), The booty (1929), assault (1930), Russia to date (1932), Madrid. Carranza 22 (1940) and History of the War in Spain (1940), his best work. A recently published his novel The clandestine work (2005). And, as the unmistakable voice of the socialist writer: "I am nothing but a socialist writer. And I do not want another title."

Francisco Arias Solis

Socialists do not die: the Socialists are sown.

Of Internet Portal for Peace and Freedom and Free Forum.

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