Education
He studied Law at the Universities of Madrid and Valladolid and he did postdoctoral work at the London School of Economics.
Diplomat journalist jurist politician writer
He studied Law at the Universities of Madrid and Valladolid and he did postdoctoral work at the London School of Economics.
He wrote for the newspapers Louisiana 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.
He followed the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party)"s revolutionary wing lead 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. 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 Monovar, Alicante shortly before the armistice. 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 Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party). He then founded the Unión Socialista Española, which was very close to the Communist Party of Spain.
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. 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.
He joined the Spanish Socialist Workers" Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party)) at a very young age and he opposed to the collaboration of that party with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930). 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). Finally in 1971 Álvarez del Vayo"s FELN was integrated into the Revolutionary Antifascist Patriotic Front (FRAP).
The March of Socialism, New York: Hill and Wang, 1974.
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 was a member of the peace commission which monitored the dispute between Bolivia and Paraguay in 1933, at the peak of the Chaco War.