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 was initiated as Freemason around 1886 in Madrid's Vetonica lodge of the Grand Orient of Spain, but his activity was limited, among other reasons due to his disillusion with the prospects this membership offered to his immediate purposes.

[5] His populist and anticlerical speeches, as well as his intervention in diverse campaigns against the governments of the Restoration, made him very popular among workers in Barcelona, who later constituted the base of a loyal electorate.

[6] In 1898 and 1899, he organized through his newspapers a campaign for the judicial review of the Montjuic trial in which forced confessions through torture had led to the execution of some of the suspects for the 1896 Barcelona Corpus Christi procession bombing.

However, he continued to be active in politics, attending the revolutionary committee that produced the Pact of San Sebastián with the intention of overthrowing King Alfonso XIII and proclaiming a republic.

Under the republican government, Lerroux regained a leading political role, being appointed prime minister three times between 1933 and 1935 and occupying the distinguished ministerial portfolios of War (1934) and State (1935).

After the attempted revolution of October 1934, he fell out of favor due to the Straperlo affair (a case of corruption bound to gambling legalization), which completely broke his alliance with the right and even weakened his position within the party.

[11] This was followed by the Nombela scandal, where he participated actively by signing a contract paying a private company 3 million pesetas to perform a cancelled route, leading to his further discreditment.

Lerroux, by Tovar , in El Imparcial .