Fernando de los Ríos Urruti (8 December 1879 – 31 May 1949) was a Spanish professor of Political Law and Socialist politician who was in turn Minister of Justice, Minister of Education and Foreign Minister between 1931 and 1933 in the early years of the Second Spanish Republic. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) he was Spanish Ambassador to France and then to the United States.
Early years (1879–1918)
Fernando del Río Urruti was born to a prosperous family on 8 December 1879 in Ronda, Málaga. His father, José del Río, was an Infantry captain. His mother, Fernanda Urruti, came from a French Basque family. His family owned agricultural properties in Ronda. The paternal side of his family included the moderate politician and government minister Antonio de los Ríos Rosas. His father died when Fernando was four years old. Fernando del Río later recalled summer holidays in Cádiz where he went for walks with the Andalusian anarchist Fermín Salvochea.
Del Rio attended primary school in Ronda and studied for his baccalaureate at the Real Colegio de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción (Royal School of Our Lady of the Assumption) in Córdoba. The family then moved to Madrid at the advice of his distant uncle Francisco Giner de los Ríos. His uncle had founded the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE: Free Educational Institution) in 1876. He had considerable influence on Fernando, who attended the ILE in Madrid, taking courses in medicine, then in law and philosophy. At the same time he attended the Faculty of Law of the University of Madrid. While at university the articles of Miguel de Unamuno in Vida Nueva led del Rio to distance himself from the Catholic Church. He became an atheist, but retained a strong sense of morality and religiosity. He graduated in 1901.
While working on his doctorate del Rio lived in Barcelona and worked for the Compañía Arrendataria de Tabacos. In Barcelona he also contributed to the Madrid newspaper España, founded by Manuel Troyano(es) of Ronda. After the summer of 1905 he went with Unamuno on a conference tour in Malaga and Ronda. After returning to Madrid he taught at the ILE. Del Río obtained the title of Doctor on 29 January 1907 with a thesis on "Political Philosophy in Plato". He won a scholarship that let him study abroad at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of London. In London in 1907 he met the anarchist Peter Kropotkin, whom he would meet again in Russia in 1920. He also visited Belgium and Switzerland, and in 1908 won an extension scholarship that let him travel to Germany. He studied at several universities in Germany including the University of Jena and University of Marburg. During this trip he first became aware of socialism.
Back in Madrid in 1910 del Río met Pablo Iglesias Posse, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE, Partido Socialista Obrero Español), and began contributing to his newspaper El Socialista. In 1911 he won the competition for the chair of Political Law at the University of Granada. Soon after he legally changed his name from "del Río" to "de los Ríos". On 1 July 1912 in the Church of San José de Madrid he married Gloria Giner de los Ríos García, daughter of Hermenegildo Giner de los Ríos (1847-1923) and Laura García Hoppe (1853-1946). His wife was the niece of Francisco Giner. They had one daughter, Laura de los Ríos, born in May 1913.
De los Ríos contributed to the reviews España and El Sol and supported the Reform Party of Melquíades Álvarez, but was not active in the party. Before taking up his chair in Granada, on 19 September 1911 he became a student at the Centro de Estudios Históricos(es) (Center for Historical Studies), a school associated with the ILE. He moved to Granada and started teaching at the university in October 1912. One of his students was Federico García Lorca. De los Ríos loved music. When she was ten years old his daughter Laura sang at Lorca's home in an Epiphany puppet play. As a liberal intellectual de los Ríos enthusiastically supported the League for Spanish Political Education founded in 1913 by José Ortega y Gasset as a section of the Reform Party. When this failed to make progress in educating the masses he moved towards Socialism in the belief that changes in the structure of power and the economy were needed to raise up the people.
Restoration politics (1918–1923)