Augusto Barcia y Trelles (5 March 1881, in Vegadeo – 19 June 1961, in Buenos Aires) was a Spanish politician, several times member of the Congress of Deputies, who served as acting Prime Minister of Spain from 10 May 1936 to 13 May 1936 due to former PM Manuel Azaña being elected as President of the Republic. He was also a lawyer and a Freemason. Biography Youth and formation Born in Vegadeo, province of Oviedo, on March 5, 1881.Álvarez Rey|2009|p=374 Doctor in Law and lawyer, he was the brother of Camilo Barcia Trelles, professor of International Law, who had Adolfo Miaja de la Muela as a disciple. From an early age he stood out in the journalistic field. Founder of the magazine La Joven España, he would collaborate with newspapers such as El Correo, El Liberal or La Libertad and also served as correspondent of several foreign newspapers in Spain. Barcia, of firm Europeanist convictions and favorable to the Allies in the course of the World War I, would publish during the conflict a good number of articles and chronicles in El Liberal, newspaper of which he would also become director in 1914. Beginnings in politics In his youth Barcia was a member of the circle of friends of the politician Segismundo Moret, a prominent member of the Liberal Party. Under the influence of Moret and Gumersindo de Azcárate, he ended up militating in the Reformist Party of Melquíades Álvarez. As a member of the Spanish Cortes he was firmly against the Antiterrorist Act pushed in 1908 by then-PM Antonio Maura. For the elections of 1914 he presented his candidacy for deputy in Cortes for the Almería district of Vera; he did so presenting himself under the initials of the Reformist Party and with the clear support of some notables of this formation in Almería However, he was not elected deputy. In the elections of 1916 he would obtain a deputy seat for the district of Vera, and later he would revalidate the seat in the elections of 1918, 1919, 1920 and 1923. During his time in the Cortes he would stand out especially for his interventions on foreign policy. After the establishment of the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera he retired from active politics, devoting himself to his profession as a lawyer. The refusal of Melquíades Álvarez to criticize the dictatorship would lead Augusto Barcia to distance himself from