The Basque government, headed at the time by its president, Lehendakari Aguirre, understood that negotiation was the best way of ending the war. The main stumbling block was that this approach disobeyed the order given by Indalecio Prieto – minister of Defence in the Republican government - to raze Bilbao to the ground before handing it over to Franco’s forces. Up to that moment, the number of casualties on both sides amounted to75,000 in the two and a half months that Bilbao took to fall, with around 200,000 people fleeing from the province. The Basque government finally chose not to destroy all the local industry and negotiate a surrender with Franco’s troops.