into Negrín's life of Feliciana López de Dom Pablo, one of his laboratory assistants, who would become his companion in 1926 until his death. His wife did not tolerate this relationship and attributed permanent affairs to him. In politics During his stay in Germany, Negrin had become very close to German social democracy, then at one of the moments of its maximum height and socio-political and cultural influence, but far removed from his conservative family tradition. Negrín joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the spring of 1929, at the height of the crisis of the dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera and the monarchy of Alfonso XIII. He aligned himself from the very beginning and with the moderate and reformist faction headed by Indalecio Prieto – with whom he forged a close friendship that only broke down due to the civil war – and opposed to the one led by Francisco Largo Caballero, representing the left (Marxist and revolutionary) wing of the UGT trade union and the PSOE. From 1930 onwards, he declined his academic activity in favour of politics, and in 1934 he requested a leave of absence from his professorship. In the 1931 Spanish general election he was elected deputy for Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, and re-elected in 1933 and 1936. Between April 1931 and July 1936, as political tension and social polarisation increased in Spain, Negrín identified in the socialist movement with Prieto's moderate positions and firmly opposed to the radical tendency led by Largo Caballero. The moderate faction of the PSOE, the majority in the executive committee, was in favour of maintaining the coalition with Prime Minister Manuel Azaña's Republicans in order to complete the ambitious programme of social democratic political and social reforms that had been launched by the left-wing government between 1931 and 1933 (secularisation of the state, agrarian reform, administrative decentralisation, military reform, progressive labour legislation, etc.). According to Prieto, Negrín and their supporters, this republican-socialist conjunction was essential to successfully promote the reforms and overcome the double opposition offered by the possible reaction of the right-wing defenders of the status quo with the help of the army and by the also possible revolution of the anarcho-syndicalist or communist-inspired workers' left. In Spanish socialism he represented a clear option of republicanism and centrism, identifiable with the political position of his friend Indalecio Prieto. With regard to the revolutionary