Antonio García Quejido (16 February 1856 – 13 June 1927) was a Spanish politician, trade unionist, the first president of the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and the first general secretary of the Communist Party of Spain.

Biography

Antonio García Quejido was born in Madrid and was a typographer by profession. From a young age he was a member of the

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

circle in Madrid led by Pablo Iglesias named ''Nueva Federación Madrileña,'' which was a predecessor of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party''.'' He became one of the leaders of the party and represented the PSOE in multiple congresses of the Second International''.'' In 1888, he participated in the founding of the General Union of Workers (UGT), of which he was elected president. Between 1894 and 1905 he held the position of general secretary of the union center. In 1897 he was elected secretary of the national committee of the PSOE, although he left the leadership of the UGT when his proposal for an alliance with the bourgeois republicans was turned down. He was reinstated as secretary general of the UGT from 1899 to 1902. In 1901 he edited the first volume of ''

Kapital ''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in materialist phi ...

'', by Karl Marx in Spanish. García Queido was the Socialist candidate in numerous elections, in 1909 he was elected councilor of the

Madrid City Council The City Council of Madrid ( es, Ayuntamiento de Madrid) is the top-tier administrative and governing body of the Madrid, the capital and biggest city of Spain. The City Council is composed by three bodies; the Mayor who leads the City Council an ...

. From then on he opposed the alliance with the Republicans. In 1912 he was appointed director of ''

El Socialista Revolutionary Socialist Party (in Spanish: ''Partido Socialista Revolucionario''), was a political party in Peru formed in November 1976 by a group of radical army officers who had been active in the "first phase of the revolution" under Velasco ...

,'' the official newspaper of the PSOE. After the outbreak of World War I, he was against both imperialist sides, unlike the

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

positions of the majority of the PSOE leaders. When the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...

broke out in 1917, he was one of the socialist leaders who supported the entry of the PSOE into the

Third International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by a ...

, a position who took favor of within the Party until 1921, when the split that gave rise to the Spanish Communist Workers' Party (PCOE), of which he was the founder; and later to the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), of which he was elected its first general secretary. After the 1923 general election, he resigned as general secretary and did not hold any significant posts after his resignation. García Quejido died on 13 June 1927, at the age of seventy one in Madrid.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Garcia Quejido, Antonio 1856 births 1927 deaths Spanish trade union leaders Spanish communists Spanish socialists Spanish Socialist Workers' Party politicians Spanish Marxists Communist Party of Spain politicians Unión General de Trabajadores members Politicians from Madrid