Julio Álvarez del Vayo (9 February 1891[1] in Villaviciosa de Odón, Community of Madrid – 3 May 1975[2] in Geneva, Switzerland) was a Spanish Socialist politician, journalist and writer.
Álvarez studied Law at the Universities of Madrid and Valladolid and he did postdoctoral work at the London School of Economics. He joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) at a very young age and he opposed to the collaboration of that party with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923 - 1930). He wrote for the newspapers La Nación of Argentina, El Liberal and El Sol of Spain, and The Guardian of Britain. He visited the United States, the European fronts during the First World War and the Soviet Union as a journalist. 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 a member of the Parliament. He followed the PSOE's revolutionary wing led by Largo Caballero.
During the Civil War he held several political offices on the Republican side: he was twice minister of Foreign Affairs, delegate to the League of Nations and commissar and general of the Army. He was a member of the peace commission which monitored the dispute between Bolivia and Paraguay in 1933, at the peak of the Chaco War.[3]
In his role as Foreign Minister, Alvarez del Vayo had repeatedely requested refuge for Spaniards fleeing Franco's Nationalist forces throughout Spain. In 1939 he wrote to Monsieur Georges Bonnet, asking for the safe harbouring of over 150,000 Spanish Republicans in France, to which Bonnet declined "owing to the financial and other technical difficulties involved".[4] 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 attacks against the Francoist troops. He fled by airplane from the base in Monòver, Alicante shortly before the armistice.
In 1939, Vayo began writing for The Nation. He moulded much of the magazine's editorial tone on US foreign policy throughout World War II and the early Cold War as a member of the board of editors under Freda Kirchwey's editorship from 1941 to 1955. He was identified with the left wing of the Spanish Socialist Party and was reviled by the anti-Stalinist and liberal left, from Dwight Macdonald to Arthur Schlesinger.[5]
During the 1940s and 1950s Álvarez del Vayo lived in exile in Mexico, the United States and Switzerland. He radicalized his political positions and was expelled from the PSOE. He then founded the Unión Socialista Española, which was very close to the Communist Party of Spain. In 1963, following the abandoning of armed struggle by the Communist Party and the waning of the activity of the Spanish Maquis, Álvarez del Vayo felt the need for a pro-Republican movement carrying out the armed struggle within Spain and established the Spanish National Liberation Front (FELN). However, the FELN as a group remained small and its activity was very limited owing to the effectiveness and fierceness of the Spanish police network. Finally in 1971 Álvarez del Vayo's FELN was integrated into the Revolutionary Antifascist Patriotic Front (FRAP).[6] Álvarez del Vayo was the acting president of FRAP at the time of his death, which occurred on 3 May 1975 after suffering a cardiac failure on 26 April.[7] He was buried alongside his wife Louise. The mortuary concession ran out at the end of 2015. In 2016, the Association of Former Guerrillas in France (AAGEF-FFI), informed that his tomb was about to be destroyed, decided to take over the concession, as a precautionary measure, paying the €1,484 required for five years, an objective that was achieved.[8]