Manuel Azaña

Prime minister of Spain, president of Spain (1880-1940)

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Lived 1880–1940, aged 60Spain

Spain PoliticiansPolitician

Wikipedia
59 languages
Cross-language footprint
Rank in Spain
#241
Politicians
Era
1880–1940
Aged 60
Known for
The Spanish Earth
1937

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

He led Spain's Second Republic through reform and civil war, then watched it collapse from exile. Azaña spent the 1920s arguing that democracy meant equal citizens under law — a decade later he was signing decrees as the country tore itself apart.

Biography

About

A published author in the 1910s who stood with the Allies during World War I, Azaña rejected the nostalgia for Imperial Spain and followed the French Enlightenment instead, taking up a political quest for democracy in the 1920s. When the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed in April 1931, he became Minister of War and enacted military reform to modernize the armed forces with fewer officers, then Prime Minister that October. He organized the Popular Front in 1935 and became President in 1936. The Spanish Civil War broke out during his presidency. With the Republic's defeat in 1939, he fled t…

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