Juan Andrés Montenegro

Juan Andrés Montenegro (June 1 st, 1901 - July 19 th , 1981) was a Spanish and  revolutionary, politician, and statesman who served as General Secretary of the Spanish Communist Party from 1968 until his death in 1981 and was the overall de-facto leader of the Spanish Democratic Republic. Born in Barcelona in Catalonia in June of 1901, Montenegro grew up in a poor peasant background and was forced to work in the city at the age f 13 to support this poor family, who were forced to live in the outskirts of the city. As Spain industrialized, he found himself forced to adapt to a changing world and would eventually join the Spanish Communist Party when he was 20 years old in 1921. He advocated for a communist state in Spain and was declared a criminal by the Spanish government along with the communist party due to their opposition to the monarchy.

Montenegro was forced into a life of crime, but joined the Spanish Revolutionary Army in 1936 after the monarchy was abolished and was replaced with the instead and he fought to preserve the republic along with the many other factions of the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. He took part in the Siege of Madrid where he helped defend the city and served as one of the leading political officers of the Red Army. After he successfully defend the city and pushed out all Nationalist forces by 1938, Montenegro took part in the Andalusia Offensive where he and thousands of other republican soldiers stormed Nationalist territory in Andalusia, Southern Spain and split their territory in two. The war ended in 1939 in a Republican victory and the Spanish Democratic Republic was established after the Communist Party took over both the Republican factions, the military, and now the new central government.

Montenegro entered into the realm of politics serving as a member of the Socialist Party of Catalonia, a regional branch of the Spanish Communist Party based in Catalonia, and eventually rose to the ranks where he served as First Secretary of the Socialist Party of Catalonia from 1951 until 1968 when he took over in a silent, bloodless coup. As General Secretary of the Spanish Communist Party, he sought to assert Spain as a regional power in Europe and as a formidable ally to the Soviet Union as an independent communist state free from the influence and pressure of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. To do this, Montenegro altered the party's ideology embracing a form of National Communism instead of the previous internationalist ideology based around his ideas from the September Thesis. He made Communist Spain a powerful player in the European stage due to its militaristic nature, but also increased censorship, intimidation of political opposition, and was known for his pacification programs such as the Spanish Reorganization Campaign, the Catalonia Anti-Revisionist Campaign, and the Basque Socialization Campaign.