was a serious political and diplomatic blunder that would make it impossible to obtain vital aid from France and Great Britain. As the finance minister, he built up the Carabineros (custom guards), a force of 20,000 men which was later nicknamed the "Hundred Thousand Sons of Negrín" (an allusion to the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis), in order to recover the control of the French frontier posts, which had been seized by the anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). With the approval of President Azaña, Largo Caballero and other influential ministers (including Prieto), he took the controversial decision to transfer the Spanish gold reserves to the Soviet Union in return for arms and equipment urgently needed to continue the war (October 1936). Worth $500 million at the time (another $240 million had been sent to France in July), critics argued that this action put the Republican government under the control of Joseph Stalin. Prime minister The Barcelona May Days of 1937, when factions on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War engaged each other in street battles and anarchist and communist Republican soldiers fought for control of strategic points in Barcelona, led to a governmental crisis that forced Largo Caballero to resign. On 17 May 1937, President Manuel Azaña named Negrín the 135th Prime Minister of Spain, to end to the indiscipline and disarray in the rearguard. Negrín's government included Indalecio Prieto named minister of War, Navy and Air, Julián Zugazagoitia as minister of interior (both socialists), the communists Jesús Hernández Tomás as minister of education and Vicente Uribe as minister of agriculture, the republicans José Giral as foreign minister and Bernardo Giner de los Ríos as public works minister, the Basque Manuel Irujo as minister of justice and the Catalan Nationalist Jaume Aiguader as minister of labour. Negrín's energetic and willful management, exemplified in his campaign slogan ("resistir es vencer", "to resist is to win"), captured for a time the hopes and desires of the depressed and semi-despondent rearguard and revived the meagre forces of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces. Goals In the anarchist-controlled areas, Aragon and Catalonia, in addition to the temporary military success, there was a vast social revolution in which the workers and peasants collectivised land and industry, and set up councils parallel to the paralyzed Republican government. Negrin's main objectives were to fortify the central government, to reorganize and fortify the Republican Armed