6. Repression and the redefinition of politics during the long 1935

On 16 February 1935, Julio C. S. appeared in court charged with the illegal possession of a weapon. Julio admitted the pistol was his and testified that the Assault Guard had instructed him to find a firearm – an easy task, they said, as ‘guns even gr[e]w on trees’ – for they demanded one in exchange for a work permit. Julio did indeed claim to have found the pistol under a tree. Implausible though his testimony may appear, witnesses, including a priest and a foreman, corroborated his statement and the court absolved him. Julio fared better than thousands of others who suffered the repression of the revolutionary insurrection. Nevertheless, despite his ‘good standing’ and non-participation in the events of October, Julio was also caught up in the repression and its contradictions: all industrial workers were sacked and a gun was required for a work permit, but presenting a weapon appeared to indicate that its bearer was a revolutionary.¹

The defeat of the October movement led to the arrest of thousands of leftists and restrictions on left-wing political activities across Spain. Yet it was in Asturias, where the insurrection was defeated in a military campaign, that the repression hit the hardest and radically reshaped political, social and cultural life in the coalfields in what is labelled here the ‘long 1935’, stretching from late October 1934 to the elections of February 1936. Thousands were rounded up – many of whom were tortured – and spent months in prison as the authorities opened hundreds of investigations into their participation in the insurrection. New municipal authorities were appointed who purged their workforces. Left-wing institutions were closed down and their press silenced. Politics was reduced to ‘order’ – the reassertion of the traditional social order and a strong emphasis on respect for authority.

The revolutionary insurrection was not the only leftist movement to be quashed with extreme violence in the interwar period. From the Freikorps’ crushing of the Spartakists in Berlin and the brutal suppression of the Hungarian Soviet in 1919, to fascist violence against leftist activists during the Italian biennio rosso, the revolutionary moments at the end of the First World War saw the transplantation of the violent strategies from the war to domestic political problems.² The construction of right-wing dictatorships in the 1930s was accompanied by different tactics. In Austria Dollfuss pursued a ‘salami’ strategy of slowly slicing away at the social democrats while the inauguration of Hitler’s rule in Germany saw restraints on Nazi violence lifted and a period of ‘structured chaos’ that disarticulated the left.³ Yet Spain in 1934 was not emerging from a war, nor had the formal mechanisms of democratic rule been strangled. The repression of the Asturian insurrection was different insofar as it was conducted by a democratic regime, although elections and a future return to power of the left appeared remote in late 1934. A democratic framework did not preclude a repression that prefigured some aspects of the Francoist repression during and after the Spanish Civil War. Relying on exclusion and the presence of the army was ultimately unsustainable, particularly in the context of the Asturian coalfields, and only increased polarization, fashioned a crisis of community at the local level and set the foundations for a wave of fragile left-wing radicalism in 1936.

Repression, hot and cold

Faces peered fearfully from behind windows and doors as government forces 18,000-strong entered the mining valleys on 19 October 1934.⁴ Many revolutionaries had already fled into the mountains, hiding their weapons or leaving them behind in schools or other buildings for collection by the army, as agreed by Belarmino Tomás and General López Ochoa.⁵ On entering the coal valleys, the government forces looted and burned Casas del Pueblo and some homes, including Tomás’s house, where they grabbed everything from watches to a kilogram of fruit jelly.⁶ These terrorization strategies had been employed during the capture of Oviedo, when government troops murdered patients in the hospital and between twenty-five and fifty prisoners in the Pelayo barracks. They also engaged in murder, rape and looting in the peripheral districts of the city. The techniques drew on Spanish experiences of conducting a decades-long colonial war in North Africa, and for Franco, appointed military advisor by the minister of defence, Asturias was a frontier war.⁷ Soldiers sold watches and other pilfered goods in improvised markets, just as they would during the Civil War.⁸ Not all approved of the soldiers’ behaviour and some officers attempted to restrain the actions of their troops.⁹

The hot repression was soon replaced by the round-up and prosecution of suspected revolutionaries in a vast campaign that continued throughout 1935. Nearly fifty provisional prisons had been created within two days of the end of the insurrection and summary military trials began immediately.¹⁰ At least 15,000 Asturians are calculated to have passed through the prison system as a result of the revolutionary insurrection and 2,587 were still incarcerated in 1936.¹¹ The state of war – proclaimed in the whole of Spain on 6 October – was eventually replaced in Asturias, as in regions like Barcelona, Madrid and Vizcaya, with the state of alarm, which dictated censorship of the press and restrictions on civil liberties and the right of association. It remained in place until January 1936.¹² Troops continued to be stationed in the coalfields even after the state of war was lifted and throughout 1935 they gave the impression that the valleys were subject to military occupation. Foreign observers also remarked on the omnipresence of khaki uniforms and restrictions on groups in public spaces in Oviedo. British Labour MP Leah Manning reported in late 1934 that security forces ‘hustle[d] workers wherever they could find two or three of them together’ and nine months later Argentinian journalist Roberto Arlt wrote that Oviedo felt like the ‘inside of a prison’ as ‘three out of five’ people on the streets were dressed in military uniform. It was ‘impossible to talk without armed witnesses’.¹³

The cold repression encompassed the beatings and torture that accompanied the authorities’ search for fugitive revolutionaries and firearms. Even if killings were not the order of the day, non-lethal physical violence was central to the daily experience of real or suspected revolutionaries in prisons and coalfield towns and was the main mechanism for terrorizing the Asturian left. Manuel García recalled that every day a lorry of assault guards arrived in Olloniego and beat everyone in sight.¹⁴ In prisons and detention centres methods of torture included the ‘tri-motor’ (suspending the victim from their wrists, which were bound behind their back), the ‘laughter pipe’ (running a gauntlet of guards) and the ‘water bath’ (submerging the prisoner in freezing water before beating them). The degrading abuse also included the use of hammers on knees and hands and twisting or applying heat to sexual organs.¹⁵ A former councillor in Oviedo was subjected to a half-hour beating followed by six-and-a-half hours spent standing facing the wall under the threat of death if he moved. Others were beaten and left for days without food or drink, or, in a particularly degrading move, forced to lick toilet bowls. In Turón, civilians, including women dressed in mourning, were present and participated in torture sessions. Two Falangists whose fathers had been killed by the revolutionaries beat an imprisoned socialist councillor to death.¹⁶

Such was the treatment to which prisoners were subject before they were formally charged or put on trial. The beatings were not usually intended to be lethal, although the number of suicides and deaths in detention – along with the numbers incapacitated for future work – indicates a lack of regard for the welfare of prisoners at the very least. Prisoners committed or attempted suicide by cutting or stabbing themselves, and one man (allegedly) threw himself into the Nalón river and drowned when in the hands of civil guards.¹⁷ Such deaths were the result of prisoners’ desperation or an attempt by the authorities to disguise a death in custody.¹⁸

Lisardo Doval, the ‘Jackal’, was a key figure in the use of torture. Doval, a major in the civil guards, was appointed ‘special delegate of the minister of war for public order’ and given carte blanche in his task of combing the region for revolutionaries. He was familiar with Asturias, for he had commanded the Civil Guard in the province in the 1920s. For six weeks in November and December 1934, the security forces under his orders ranged through Asturias and León undertaking mass arrests. Two thousand individuals passed through his headquarters – the Adoratrices convent in Oviedo – where torture was systematic. An outcry over Doval’s actions and his ‘relish for brutality’ led to an investigation and he was sent back to Spanish Morocco in December, a decision that disappointed the mining bosses.¹⁹ Despite Doval’s removal from the region, he was only one of the ‘“specialists” in anti-subversive struggle’ and torture continued after he left.²⁰

The most infamous episode from the repression occurred in the early hours of 25 October. In revenge for the death of twenty-five soldiers in a truck explosion, twenty-four prisoners were bundled into a lorry and taken to Carbayín, where they were shot or hacked to death and their bodies secretly buried. Such nocturnal ‘ sacas [removals]’ would be a preferred method of extrajudicial killing during the Spanish Civil War.²¹ Rumours soon circulated as to the fate of the men taken to Carbayín. Their relatives investigated the whereabouts of the missing men and discovered the cadavers. The military authorities handed over just one body (the others being interred in a common grave), which only fuelled rumours and horror stories of how the prisoners had been treated.²²

The killings in Carbayín were exceptional, yet only hindsight provided this relative comfort. At the time, they appeared to be further evidence of a blanket, indiscriminate terrorization that encompassed the intentional use of lethal violence. Of the twenty-four victims in Carbayín, not all were revolutionaries. One was a CEDA-supporting teacher, while another had been arrested for a traffic offence.²³ The military authorities had threatened fugitive revolutionaries with the death penalty. López Ochoa issued a proclamation on 20 October dictating that ‘all those who are found to possess weapons or explosives [over the next twenty-four hours] will undergo summary trial and be shot if found guilty’.²⁴ His pronouncements fleshed out into policy the justifications for lethal violence that had been voiced by politicians and could be read in the press. The cabinet itself approved death sentences for military officials involved in the rebellion in Catalonia, although these were later commuted.²⁵ Even though only two death sentences were carried out of the many handed out to revolutionaries who had participated in the Asturian insurrection, it was not clear at the time that sentences would be commuted and that extrajudicial killing would be rare. The repression was not a finely tuned instrument. Fugitive and captured revolutionaries and their families were under no illusions as to the fate that could await them. Women, fearful that the Carbayín executions would be repeated, held nocturnal vigils outside the improvised prison in Sama to impede further sacas.²⁶

Military campaigns against left-wing militias and the unchecked use of violence in repressing left-wing revolutionary movements occurred in other areas of Europe in the interwar period. But the repression of the 1934 revolutionary movement operated in a different manner to other European states. The repression did not occur in a power vacuum or in the fragile situation of unconsolidated state power after the First World War in central Europe. Here the ‘mobilizing power of defeat’, backstabbing myths, the dissolution of borders and traditional political authority, and frustrated imperial and national dreams shaped the white terrorization of radical left political movements, including the Munich and Hungarian Soviets in 1919.²⁷ Nor was the repression akin to the shockwave of violence that followed Nazism’s ascent to power, which disoriented and crushed the German left in 1933. In March and April, groups of Stormtroopers broke into and destroyed Social Democratic Party property, raised Nazi flags, and tortured socialists, as the police either looked on or colluded in the acts.²⁸ In Asturias, even as the violence and occupation of socialist centres sent out a clear message about which authority held sway in the coalfields, the Spanish army did not seek to cement a new political project. The distinctiveness of the repression of the Asturian October lies in the mass use of state violence by a democratic regime rather than a nation-state suffering the fallout of war or constructing a dictatorship.

For residents of the coalfields, the widespread use of violence and indiscriminate arrests were a shocking exhibition of state power, but even those members of the working class untouched by violence struggled to avoid the purges of the workforce. Factories and mines closed their doors and cancelled all contracts. Testament to the scale and blanket nature of the dismissals is the number of files opened in 1936 to investigate the sackings. Within five months, 7,000 individual files had been opened.²⁹ When mines began to reopen in mid December 1934, it took weeks for the workforce to be replenished. By February 1935, only 531 were back at work at Fábrica de Mieres, which constituted a fifth of the former mining workforce, to say nothing of those employed in steel production.³⁰

All industrial workers were forced to reapply for their jobs in a carefully controlled process that assumed workers were guilty until proven innocent. This process was closely managed by the mining and steel companies and security forces – and, at SHE mines, by the SCOM.³¹ It provided an opportunity for companies to reassert their authority after the experience of the first biennium of the Republic, by selecting those they wanted to admit as workers. Workers soliciting employment at Duro-Felguera had to file past a civil guard who had survived the revolution. He alone could determine whether they were readmitted to employment.³² The authorities introduced a new identity card that was required in order to work. Mining companies supplied the cards and four photographs of the worker: one for the card, one for the company and two for the local police forces.³³ The withholding of identity cards over the following months prevented many from working and was another tool for disciplining the workforce.³⁴ The process of obtaining a job was complicated further by the security forces’ requirement of a firearm in exchange for work: those who handed in a weapon would not be prosecuted as long as they were not leaders or had not committed blood crimes.³⁵ Yet individuals risked being charged with illegal possession of a firearm, as happened to Julio C. S.

The mining companies took advantage of the favourable context provided by the defeat of the insurrection to remove benefits that mineworkers had gained. The right to free coal was withdrawn, workers were evicted from company housing and companies stopped paying pensions and subsidies, which violated the agreements reached with the SOMA in 1933.³⁶ The situation in the coalfields was a radicalized version of what was occurring across the country as employers lowered wages and increased working hours in what constituted a ‘drastic worsening’ of working conditions.³⁷ In Valencia, where the Workers’ Alliance was second in strength to Asturias, union centres closed for months, working hours were extended, wages were lowered and union membership fell. In rural areas, the ‘combination of the legacy of disunity, repression and recession [left them] demoralized and their unions eviscerated’.³⁸

Sackings also occurred at municipal councils. More than 2,000 councils were removed across Spain and replaced with councillors from the governing parties, which in the coalfields led to districts managed by the Radical Party, CEDA and PRLD.³⁹ The new municipal steering committees dismissed whole corps of municipal workers. Several units were dissolved in Oviedo, including butchers and tax collectors, who had to reapply for their jobs.⁴⁰ The municipal authorities in Laviana agreed to suspend all municipal teachers on 31 October, while in Langreo ‘suspicious’ teachers were removed.⁴¹ The provincial deputation revealed a zealous desire to purge undesirable workers by sacking hospital staff for a variety of reasons – not simply for undocumented absences during the insurrection, but also for previous suspensions.⁴² The purges were thus an opportunity to reconfigure the workforce according to the new authorities’ image. In other parts of Spain, the authorities also seized the chance to assert a different political and economic order.⁴³ Teachers in Valencia were sacked.⁴⁴ The government decreed a new category of ‘abusive strike’ which allowed contracts to be cancelled when a strike was called for reasons unrelated to work or which did not adhere to the timetables set out in labour law.⁴⁵

The atmosphere was oppressive in the Asturian coalfields as curfews, safe conducts and restrictions on meetings constrained the activities of citizens. Many classrooms were turned into army billets and in some cases remained so until the end of 1935.⁴⁶ Casas del Pueblo, co-operatives and cultural centres were looted, burned and closed, or turned into prisons, as occurred to the Casa del Pueblo in Sama, which an anarchist described as a ‘den of torment’.⁴⁷ The SOMA was suspended at the request of the civil governor, although in fact he wanted the union dissolved.⁴⁸ With centres ransacked or closed, the institutional heart of local communities for many was removed, profoundly reshaping previous patterns of sociability.

Journalists painted a sombre image of the coal valleys during the long 1935. In the absence of work, misery quickly gripped households in late 1934. In Mieres, women and children begged for leftovers from the soldiers’ mess and the town was ‘submerged in a sea of tears and sorrow’.⁴⁹ La Felguera was a ‘picture of misery’ and there was a ‘tragic silence’ in miners’ houses in Ujo where ‘at the windows and balconies, squalid and barefoot children [could] be seen, along with poverty-stricken women with brick-coloured skin, thin, sickly and threadbare’.⁵⁰ The absence of male workers due to death, exile or imprisonment often left families without principal wage earners. Women bore the burden of providing for both their families and imprisoned male relatives.⁵¹ The effects of the vast police–military operation on local society would become clearer in 1936, but appeared to have already engendered a deepening distrust of the authorities, particularly the security forces. Rumours that diphtheria vaccines were designed to damage the mental development of children led to them refusing to attend school and running from the Civil Guard.⁵² The authorities were sufficiently frustrated to declare publicly that the rumours were ‘absurd’.⁵³

The repression trapped communities in a social half-life that continued through 1935. Unemployment was a significant problem for Mieres as the annual fiestas neared while in Sama the celebrations took place ‘with the liveliness that is feasible in these moments’.⁵⁴ The opening of cinemas and some cultural centres did little to alleviate the sombreness and in any case, restrictions remained. The Ateneo Obrero in La Felguera reopened at the end of November, but there were to be no meetings, and it had to close at nine o’clock in the evening. In a measure that confirmed the stasis and isolation of the coal valleys from Spanish political life, only existing stocks of newspapers and books could be read. Only bars remained as a space where unrepentant revolutionaries could discuss their ideas and dissect current affairs in hushed voices.⁵⁵

Yet conversing in the tavern was dangerous. The security forces also went to bars to glean information on fugitives and arrested those who criticized the repression.⁵⁶ Relying on eavesdropping and disguising policemen as ‘cart drivers’ or ‘villagers’ suggests that town and village communities offered little help in pursuing revolutionaries and that the police had to resort to subterfuge.⁵⁷ But the dynamics of repression cannot be reduced to a binary of external military forces oppressing the population of the coalfields. The underground left continued to wield a certain amount of power and exert pressure on residents. At the same time, the authorities relied on denunciation and collaboration from citizens to police the population – half a million pesetas was found in Sotrondio thanks to the work of informers.⁵⁸ Surviving letters from the archive and testimonies drawn from court records do not provide a comprehensive picture of denunciation and collaboration, but they do reveal how the insurrection and its repression intensified political and personal rivalries that divided communities in the coalfields.

Citizens sent many hand-and type-written letters to the authorities denouncing their neighbours for participating in the insurrection and providing information to aid the repression. One letter alleged 150 revolutionaries had retreated to a cave with three to four thousand guns, dynamite and food for six weeks. Only those who knew the password could gain access. Another embellished an accusation that SOMA leader Graciano Antuña had handed out fistfuls of banknotes with the writer’s own theorization of the origins of the insurrection. A handwritten note in Asturian dialect provided a long list of alleged revolutionaries. The brief descriptions, such as ‘the son of one who used to be a butcher…’ and ‘Belarmino, son of one from Ronzón who has a wooden leg and was president of the communist centre’, could only be deciphered by someone familiar with the community.⁵⁹

Collaborating with the authorities as an informer could confer a degree of power in the reconfigured political context. Yet influence did not equate to impunity despite some appearing to confuse the two. Jesús P. R., a mineworker and informer for the Civil Guard, was drinking in a bar in Turón one evening when he publicly announced that he had enemies locally because he was an informer and therefore enjoyed ‘influence’. He asked a man present, Francisco G. G., how he would react to provocation, to which Francisco said he would do nothing. Jesús – emboldened by his status and state of inebriation – illustrated his point by assaulting Francisco and then the bar owner. Despite the influence he claimed to enjoy, the Civil Guard arrested him and he was prosecuted.⁶⁰

Informing could confer power and influence with the authorities, but it was not without risk. Participants and those who supported the insurrection still walked the streets, even if they could not express their politics openly, and some were willing to avenge or protect themselves from ‘miserable informers’ with violence if necessary.⁶¹ When Belarmino G. C., a day labourer, was arrested for shooting a miner at midnight in mid August 1935, he claimed that he was the real victim in this particular case as the town was ‘harassing him to death’ for passing information to the Civil Guard.⁶² In the case of the death of Manuel G., Región reported that there were several explanations circulating, ‘but the most widespread … is that Manuel is accused of having denounced several individuals who had taken part in the revolutionary events’.⁶³

True or not, claiming harassment by fugitive revolutionaries aligned the individual with the side of the law and presented himself – the cases invariably involve male protagonists – as an upstanding member of the community. It was a logical line of defence. Belarmino G. G., when questioned regarding an assault of which his brother stood accused, blamed the victim for the attack:

Belarmino embellished his account by accusing Salvador of possessing looted money, which he based on hearsay and Salvador’s alleged expansive spending in bars.⁶⁴

The statements to the police paint a clear picture of a society divided between revolutionaries and upstanding citizens enduring unbearable oppression that continued even after the military defeat of the insurrection, but denunciations provide a more differentiated image of their communities. Framed as personal appeals to Doval, they made pointed criticism of the authorities and their own communities. They alleged, for example, that a corporal had accepted a bribe to remove socialists from prison and that rightists were colluding with revolutionaries in order to save themselves.⁶⁵ One criticized the ‘rich’ for saving revolutionaries in a gesture of gratitude for having survived the insurrection, while another warned Doval that parish priests ‘go around intervening on everyone’s behalf and you should not listen to them’.⁶⁶ Certainly three priests claimed after the Civil War that treating former revolutionaries well during the long 1935 saved them from the wave of anticlerical violence at the beginning of the conflict, although it is unlikely that more than a handful did this.⁶⁷ In indicating their frustration that justice lacked the required zeal, the letters’ authors reveal that individuals proactively tried to shape the repression in the coalfields, as occurred in other contexts of denunciation in which the repression meant ‘the state [was put] at the disposal of its citizens’; the latter could draw upon the resources of the former.⁶⁸

Beneath the imagined clean dividing lines of politics, the repression was complicated by the entanglement of personal and professional relationships. In the case of a murder of a company guard by his subordinate at the entrance to the Fondón mine, the accused, Avelino C. G., argued that he had acted in self-defence. The deceased had repeatedly threatened him, as Avelino had reported the guard’s sons for participating in the insurrection. While he foregrounded the insurrection and aligned himself with the law, witnesses suggested that their differences lay in work matters that predated October 1934.⁶⁹ The repression intensified the fragmentation of society as personal affairs became public and politicized once refracted through the lens of the revolution.⁷⁰

A province under quarantine

Less than a month after the end of the insurrection, an international delegation arrived in Oviedo for what turned out to be a ‘brief and tempestuous’ visit. The British Labour Party activist and former MP Ellen Wilkinson, who had visited Spain the previous year to seek support for the International Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism, journeyed to the province alongside Labour Party peer Lord Listowel and Bourthoumieux, a lawyer from the Association Juridique Internationale, after visiting Prime Minister Lerroux and an imprisoned Largo Caballero in Madrid. On arrival in Oviedo, a ‘hostile crowd’ gathered outside the café where they dined, and followed them to a meeting at the Provincial Deputation with Doval. He quickly expelled the delegation from the province.⁷¹ The Asturian right-wing daily Región revelled in their expulsion and praised the protestors for giving Listowel, Wilkinson and Bourthoumieux the reception they ‘deserved’. The newspaper accused them of only showing interest in the treatment of prisoners and neglecting the destruction of Oviedo.⁷²

Región’s delight in the expulsion of the overseas visitors was rooted in a wider desire to control the narrative of the insurrection and the repression. Right-wing publications presented the revolutionaries as a barbarous, ungodly horde beholden to foreign ideologies. Theirs was a vision of a ‘nation under siege … with only the sword of the army and the shield of Catholic faith to protect Spain’.⁷³ The Manichean depiction was central to the election campaign of February 1936 and would underpin Francoist and Republican narratives during the Civil War.⁷⁴ The portrayal of the insurrection was also heavily gendered, from an emphasis on gruesome atrocities, which were not usually true, to highlighting female participation. As the female body was also the repository and guarantor of national honour, the nation was under threat, while women’s activities during the insurrection were brandished as evidence of the breakdown of the social order.⁷⁵

The Asturian press added an additional angle to this portrayal of the insurrection. For Región, Asturias had been martyred in a criminal rebellion by the revolutionaries, whose betrayal of their patria meant they had forfeited their right to call themselves Asturians. Región propagated a rigid narrative in which the province had to atone for its sins on its own. Asturias, an extrapolation of ‘martyred’ Oviedo, was a victim of ‘Marxism’ that had ‘suffered for Spain’ and could only heal itself sealed off from the rest of the world, in what constituted a performance of autarchic penance.⁷⁶ Reconstruction now fell to the ‘people of order’. Silencing the left and restricting political options reduced politics in the long 1935 to a narrow understanding of politics as order.

Región was zealous in policing this narrative and attacking those who criticized the repression. It labelled calls to investigate the treatment of revolutionaries a ‘farce’ and ‘an insult to the Spanish Army, to Asturias and to Spain’; it was ‘ Región and Asturias against the ‘anti-patria’.⁷⁷ The newspaper was not alone in attempting to control the portrayal of Asturias. The Oviedo city council proposed a ban on the sale of newspapers which deviated from the right’s narrative and agreed to appoint a committee of ‘paladins of truth’ to combat the ‘calumnies’ spread in the press in a move of chest-thumping regional pride.⁷⁸ Six months after the expulsion of Wilkinson, Bourthoumieux and Listowel, the governor general of Asturias, ejected French observers from the trial of those committing murders in Turón during the insurrection. He accused them of meddling in Spanish affairs that were no business of theirs.⁷⁹

Censorship and the ban on left-wing organizations in Asturias meant that the right-wing newspapers had no competition in the dissemination of their narrative of events. Yet investigations by deputies protected by parliamentary immunity and reports published abroad raised awareness of the atrocities committed during the defeat of the revolutionaries and the torture of those imprisoned. By early 1935, the government was forced to acknowledge international criticism directed at the repression in Asturias and published its own version of the insurrection.⁸⁰ Luis Bolín, the London correspondent for the conservative daily ABC, led a campaign by Spanish monarchists that included ‘talks on the BBC and … articles for the Morning Post’ to counter reports of torture. Such reports encompassed the pamphlet Spain, October 1934 with a foreword by the French writer Henri Barbusse and produced by International Red Aid (SRI) – a Communist organization – and an article in Foreign Affairs penned by Luis Araquistáin, a leading Caballerista.⁸¹ In Spain, there was greater freedom to publish outside of Asturias. Heraldo de Madrid and Bilbao’s El Liberal published accounts of the insurrection. The Asturian socialist newspapers that were permitted in 1935 avoided reporting on the insurrection and the repression to prevent the wrath of the authorities, focusing instead on internal doctrinal and strategic matters.

The struggle over reporting on the insurrection and the repression formed part of the ‘invention’ of October, which was a central battleground of Spanish politics during the long 1935.⁸² This invention emerged through newsprint and a flurry of pamphlets and books with contrasting interpretations of the insurrection. There were martyrological accounts from clerical victims and right-wing commentators, eyewitness accounts from those who had lived through the insurrection, such as Aurelio de Llano, and leftist accounts, including the novelized version penned by José Díaz Fernández and published in Diario de Madrid.⁸³ Región was outspoken in its criticism of the serialized publication of Díaz Fernández’s heroic depiction of the revolutionaries, which it labelled a ‘pile of pages full of lazy and deplorable writing’, and appealed to all Asturians to protest to the editor of Diario de Madrid.⁸⁴

For Región, the military was the sole bulwark against the return of revolution. It was the ‘little soldiers’ who had brought ‘tranquillity on the night of 20 October’ and peace depended on their presence.⁸⁵ The perceived threat posed by the dangerous revolutionary other was revealed in an anxious motion presented at a council meeting in Oviedo:

The only solution was to bolster the defences of the city, which appeared under siege by a working class synonymous with revolution. In emphasizing the importance of the military to safeguarding the social order, Región did not openly appeal for military intervention in politics – as would occur in July 1936 – nor was it especially vocal in defending the army as a repository of Spanish identity and tradition. Rather, the army simply guaranteed security. Repeated troop manoeuvres and exercises in 1935 were thus a reassuring spectacle for the ‘people of order’.⁸⁷ In July, CEDA leader and minister of war, José María Gil Robles, oversaw manoeuvres in the coalfields involving 3,000 troops using live ammunition, and a military parade in Oviedo, which recalled scenes from after the insurrection.⁸⁸

The difficulty in relying on the presence of the military to safeguard social peace was the repeated invocation of the spectre of revolution, which served to inculcate anxiety. As Región warned its readers, ‘[t]he working masses retain their arms because they want to repeat the attack’.⁸⁹ On several occasions in 1934 and 1935, rumours spread through the province of planned strikes, arms caches and the return of revolution, playing on existing anxieties that were fed by the press. The far right fanned them further in accordance with their desire to undermine the political order. Frustrated at the destabilizing effect of rumours, the governor fined those responsible, including a leading Falangist and his wife.⁹⁰

For those who did not identify with the narrative propagated of the insurrection and the reduction of politics to ‘order’, the political atmosphere – choked by censorship and restrictions on the freedom of association – was stifling. One individual, describing himself as an ‘honourable worker who loves work and culture’, wrote an open letter to the civil governor in July 1935 asking ‘publicly if it is possible for one to be a Communist, socialist, “leftist Republican” or simply a liberal’ as ‘it actually appears to be the opposite’. The author hid his name and location as there was ‘a serious threat ... hanging over me if I disclose the daily harassment of which I am the object because I am a socialist’. He ended by questioning, ‘are we allowed to think?’⁹¹

Relying on censorship and the presence of the military was ultimately unsustainable. Neither could absolute control be wielded over the narrative of events, nor Asturias remain under quarantine indefinitely. In the midst of the national election campaign in early 1936, the state of alarm was lifted in the province and the Asturian left was finally able to discuss the insurrection and repression in the public sphere. Región could not hide its rage:

An opportunity

The long 1935 provided the right with an unprecedented opportunity to redirect the Republic. The banning of unions and left-wing political parties in Asturias, the ‘gag’ on their press and the imprisonment and exile of activists afforded right-wing groups the unchallenged freedom to paint an alternative vision of the Republic. New municipal councils and steering committees across the country meant municipal resources could be redirected at the local level and previous agreements overturned. Religious orders returned to provincial welfare institutions and councils in Langreo and Aller paid the food and cleaning bills of the armed forces in their districts.⁹³ Sensitive to the change in political winds, parish priests requested that municipal authorities return parish cemeteries that previous councils had seized using Republican legislation. Councillors were sympathetic but reluctant to relinquish their hold on burial grounds. They were more open to overturning bans on funeral processions with the raised cross.⁹⁴

Yet little was achieved by these administrations, which were more content with balancing budgets after the alleged profligacy of the previous administration rather than rechannelling the Republic at the local level. There was also little effort made to alleviate the social problems caused by the repression. Welfare initiatives introduced by the newly appointed councils were ad-hoc, precarious affairs that relied on volunteers – often young women – and donations, and owed much to traditional private forms of charity. The meagre resources struggled to deal with the sheer number of those who required aid; in Langreo alone, over 500 families received 35,000 pesetas in cash hand-outs.⁹⁵ After an initial wave of activity, these initiatives fizzled out. The canteen for children in Turón closed in mid April due to a lack of funds despite repeated appeals for donations.⁹⁶ The authorities showed little interest in providing widespread, systematic welfare assistance.

A more sustained attempt at aid may have facilitated more support for the new municipal authorities. As regards trade unions, there was also little to attract former members of the SOMA or the SUM to the SCOM in terms of the latter’s achievements. As the only legal mining trade union, the SCOM was ideally placed to assert itself as an effective voice for mineworkers, but the mining companies preferred to ignore it. When SHE refused mineworkers the paid holidays they were legally owed, the SCOM’s protests fell on deaf ears. This obliged the SCOM to overturn its strategy of co-operation with the company, and it threatened a strike. Finally, the authorities intervened to force the SHE to bow to the legislation. Despite this victory, there is no evidence it aided the union.⁹⁷ The SHE’s reticence reflected the companies’ contentment with repression as a means of controlling the demands of the workforce, rather than improving living or working conditions. They were content with ‘cutting off a few heads [and] punishing the rebels’, as the social Catholic canon, Maximiliano Arboleya, complained.⁹⁸ When the mining bosses finally turned to Arboleya in February 1936 to find a way of making their workforce more sympathetic to them, it proved too late for any effective action to be undertaken.⁹⁹

The political right was unable to capitalize on the opportunity to expand offered by the absence of a public left-wing challenge in Asturias. Popular Action, which claimed over 50,000 members in the province in 1935, did not experience a surge in membership.¹⁰⁰ Right-wing organizations in the coalfields were fragile. JAP rallies in the coalfields relied on orators from Gijón, the women’s section of AP in Sama acknowledged it was struggling and the Catholic Youth had a small membership.¹⁰¹ There was an attempt at the national level to attract workers to the right via a National Labour Front, which was financed by Catholic Action and aimed to bring together independent unions in an organization that could constitute an ‘alternative to the UGT’, but it was ‘extremely weak’ in practice.¹⁰² Its Asturian branch brought together the SCOM and independent unions from Avilés and Gijón, yet did not spark a revival of the SCOM’s fortunes. Nor did appeals for new independent, ‘apolitical’ unions have much effect.¹⁰³

The right blamed their failure to expand on a ‘hostile’ environment, including the social pressures of qué dirán (‘what will the neighbours say?’), which deterred local residents from visible support of the right.¹⁰⁴ There is evidence that political divisions were sufficiently cemented to prevent mass changes of allegiance across the left–right divide. A new Catholic school in La Argañosa – a left-wing stronghold in Oviedo – had only managed to recruit forty students two months after opening.¹⁰⁵ The left continued to exhibit strength despite being unable to mobilize publicly. Despite the restrictions, there were a small number of strikes in 1934. The authorities came down hard on any stoppage. Those who downed tools during the trial of revolutionaries from Turón were sacked and then subjected to a two-week lockout.¹⁰⁶ A UGT-CNT construction strike in July revealed a resilient left undeterred by the robust response from the governor. Despite a ban on assemblies, violence against strikers and the use of blackleg workers, the strike lasted for two months and was successful: those sacked were readmitted and the demand for a forty-four-hour working week was achieved. The governor tied himself in knots in an attempt to deny that there was a strike. Admitting it would have meant holding his hands up to a failure in his management of provincial affairs.¹⁰⁷ The strike indicated both the strength of the left (even when it had to work underground), and the inability of the authorities to offer any solution except force to what they perceived as threats to public order (rather than the expression of economic discontent).

If the overall picture was one of stagnation and paralysis in the coalfields, it did not differ markedly from the spectacle offered by national politics. While the Radicals and CEDA shared government office, they did not see eye to eye. The revolutionary insurrection was a point of contention that made co-operation difficult. The Radicals did not share CEDA’s attitude to death penalties for former revolutionaries. Two CEDA ministers resigned in April after they refused to sign the commutation of the death sentences of Ramón González Peña and Teodomiro Menéndez, which provoked a governmental crisis. The subsequent government formed solely of Radicals and the small PRLD lasted a month before it collapsed. CEDA’s strategy of slowly inching towards control of the government appeared to be working. The centre-right Republicans ceded the majority of ministries in the following administration to CEDA and Agrarian Party deputies, including Gil Robles as minister of war. As the CEDA consolidated its position, it hardened its political line. Filiberto Villalobos, the PRLD minister of education, was vilified and forced to resign due to the lack of support for his education reforms. Manuel Giménez Fernández, the social Catholic CEDA minister of agriculture, saw his agrarian reform watered down to inefficacy through amendments.¹⁰⁸ The combination of political differences between the Radicals and the CEDA, the weakness of the former and the lack of interest in government-led reform of the latter, meant that the long 1935 was a year of a political half-life in which little was achieved.¹⁰⁹

The return of the left

In the post-insurrectionary context of hunger and misery, left-wing organizations tried to introduce their own initiatives to assist supporters and family members, but their efforts were hampered by the repression and having to operate covertly or else under the protection afforded by parliamentary immunity. The initial priority was to extract fugitive revolutionaries from Asturias, which began in late December.¹¹⁰ According to Taibo, 200–300 went into exile, although the figure seems low given that 121 alone went to the USSR and the main nucleus was located in France and Belgium.¹¹¹ Help for those imprisoned in Asturias took longer to organize, and incarcerated socialists were frustrated at the lack of immediate assistance. Legal aid arrived in the form of socialist lawyer Mariano Moreno Mateos, who was quickly overwhelmed by the volume of investigations. Communist organizations, including SRI, are regarded as effective in providing aid, but it was not until spring 1935 that SRI initiatives gained a clear organizational form and there was still no SRI committee in Oviedo by mid April 1935.¹¹² That same month, the SRI founded the National Committee of Aid for the Victims of October, which was backed by socialist, Communist and Republican organizations, and channelled funds to families and prisoners. The Association of Defence Lawyers for Those Indicted for the Events of October was similarly an SRI-funded cross-party organization (although the socialists distanced themselves from it at national level). It provided legal support for prisoners across Spain and was established in Gijón from March.¹¹³

Legal assistance aside, the suppression of left-wing political parties and unions meant organizing aid was very difficult. Women played a prominent role in facilitating the organization of aid; female parliamentary deputies visited prisoners and transported orphans out of the province, and other politically active women arranged clandestine meetings in the mountains.¹¹⁴ Protected by parliamentary immunity, the Communist Dolores Ibárruri and socialists Matilde de la Torre, Veneranda Manzano and María Lejárraga supported families through initiatives like the Committee in Aid of Working-Class Children, which raised 50,000 pesetas and evacuated 500 children. The Committee was the new label for the Women Against War and Fascism committee formed in 1934.¹¹⁵

Even as activists on the ground occupied themselves with supporting prisoners, much of the movement, including those in exile and in prison, was engaged in debating future strategy. The defeat of the revolutionary insurrection and the repression meant that the socialists required a new way forward. Fierce, lengthy discussions took place in prison galleries and through correspondence and newsprint as socialists argued over the future of the movement.¹¹⁶ The debates and political manoeuvrings led to the definitive crystallization of three factions with contrasting views on alliances with other political parties, and, to a lesser extent, purges and responsibility for the insurrection.¹¹⁷ The left faction was identified with Largo Caballero, who had been arrested in his nightclothes on 14 October and remained imprisoned in Madrid. Prieto, who maintained a pragmatic, centrist position, had fled across the border to France hidden in the boot of a car. Besteiro headed the smaller, conservative wing of the socialists. With Largo Caballero imprisoned, Juan Simeón Vidarte became the de facto leader of the PSOE. He pursued a strategy of rebuilding an alliance with the left Republicans, which was welcomed by Prieto.¹¹⁸ Although Largo Caballero had approved Vidarte’s initial moves in April, the Caballeristas, which included important sections of the JS, were far from impressed by the attempt to resurrect the Republican–socialist alliance. The frictions between Caballeristas and reformist Prietistas increased from late spring and culminated in the resignation of Largo Caballero over a matter relating to the PSOE’s statutes at the end of the year. The internal struggle to control the socialist movement would continue through 1936 and during the Spanish Civil War.¹¹⁹

The left Republicans had been immersed in their own process of reorganization in the months prior to discussing a possible alliance with the socialists. Azaña’s Republican Action merged with former Radical Socialists and a Galician Republican party to form the Republican Left (IR) in April 1934. Five months later, Martínez Barrio’s breakaway Radicals merged with another group of Radical Socialists to create the Republican Union (UR). Despite tensions, the IR and UR reached a working relationship by May 1935 and momentum grew behind the left Republicans through the rest of the year. In the middle of November, Azaña, whose rallies attracted crowds of up to 400,000 supportive of an amnesty and a renewed progressive Republican project, sent the socialists a letter proposing an alliance. The Caballerista response was to demand that all of the working-class left, with the exception of the anarchists, be included. In their eyes, Communist involvement would prevent the PCE outflanking the socialists and weaken the reformist Prietistas.

Largo Caballero’s demand that the PCE be included in the alliance brought the Communists ‘out of the ghetto’, but the latter was also facilitated by a change in Comintern policy.¹²⁰ At its seventh congress in September 1935, the Comintern endorsed a policy of popular fronts, according to which Communists would collaborate in the defence of bourgeois democracy. This was a significant departure from the ‘class against class’ policy of the Third Period (1927–34) that had prohibited alliances with other political groups and attacked social democrats as ‘social fascists’. The change was due to the rise of fascism and rank-and-file unity initiatives. In France, fears of a bellicose Germany and the continued rise of right-wing leagues stimulated the desire for a broader popular front than the socialist–Communist pact signed in the summer of 1934. The French socialists endorsed the policy of a popular front in June 1935 and the following month socialists, Communists and the middle-class Radical party jointly celebrated Bastille Day.¹²¹ Political positions had shifted, and so had language and symbols. The red flag and The Internationale mixed with the French tricolour and the Marseillaise. The French Communists switched from invoking the working class to emphasize the ‘people’.¹²² This nationalization of Communist political language would become evident in Spain in 1936 in the PCE’s shift towards speaking in the name of the ‘working people’ as opposed to the working class.

There was a further bone of contention within the Spanish socialist ranks, which centred on the ‘Bolchevization’ demanded by sectors of the Socialist Youth. The Caballerista leadership of the JS produced a pamphlet, Octubre: segunda etapa, in early 1935 that constituted a withering attack on ‘reformism’ and ‘centrism’. They positioned themselves as the revolutionary vanguard, demanded a purge of the socialist ranks and called for the PSOE to leave the Second International.¹²³ Demanding ‘Bolchevization’ may have been a way of ‘deflect[ing] public attention from the PSOE left’s passivity during October 1934’ and letters from Spanish exiles to Largo Caballero calling for the expulsion of those who had not participated in the revolution would have made for uncomfortable reading for him.¹²⁴ Members of the Asturian JS rejected Octubre in a letter of 5 March. They criticized Soviet Communism, advocated an alliance with the Republicans and remarked that ‘there is no other betrayal – recognize it well – than those who have boasted of their exalted revolutionism only to have shown excessive cowardice in practice’, in what was a pointed criticism of the Madrid JS for their relative inaction during October 1934.¹²⁵ The ‘Bolchevization’ matter was closely bound up with frictions within the socialist movement. The letter was widely circulated and in various versions adulterated to be strongly censorious of Largo Caballero, who believed the letter a Prietista strategy to undermine his position.¹²⁶

Asturias is often cited as a bastion of Prietista reformism and the aforementioned letter from young members appears to confirm this. The reality was more complex and the position of Asturian socialists was far from homogeneous. Gonzalez Peña and Antuña expressed support for Prieto and Largo Caballero respectively in March 1935.¹²⁷ A fawning letter of support for Largo Caballero from Moscow in early 1936 feted October 1934 as a ‘glorious’ struggle against fascism that had united workers. The signatories, which included a dozen Asturian socialists, demanded ‘Bolchevization’ via a struggle against ‘odious reformism and centrism’ and to learn from the example set by the USSR.¹²⁸ The dispersal of the Asturian socialist movement in prisons, exile and clandestinity contributed to the fragmenting pressures and internal frictions.

As socialist internal debates raged and the left Republicans and socialists moved towards an alliance, the wider political situation was changing. Two scandals rocked the Radicals, precipitated their decline and heralded the prospect of elections. The first was the Straperlo affair, which implicated important figures in the Radical Party, including Lerroux. The matter revolved around a fraudulent roulette machine and bribes made in exchange for permits to install it. Lerroux was cleared of wrongdoing, but as the Radical Party struggled with desertions and internal chaos, the Tayá scandal broke. Radical ministers were accused of fraudulently resolving a compensation case over a contract involving shipping in Equatorial Guinea. The CEDA withdrew their support from the government and Prime Minister Chapaprieta resigned on 9 December.¹²⁹

Political momentum had grown behind what would become the Popular Front, but it was Gil Robles who seemed to have achieved his objectives. The implosion of the Radicals left the CEDA poised to control the next government at the perfect moment. The party had demanded revision of the Constitution ever since its approval in December 1931. Now that four years had passed, this could be achieved through a simple majority in the Cortes, rather than requiring the assent of two-thirds of the chamber. Importantly, however, President Alcalá Zamora doubted Gil Robles’s Republican credentials and refused to offer him the chance to form a government. Instead, he turned to the Galician Republican Manuel Portela Valladares, who piloted the moribund legislature towards elections in February 1936.¹³⁰ Furious, Gil Robles began consulting generals, including Franco, on a coup d’état that would force the president to appoint a CEDA government.¹³¹

The changing political winds were perceptible in Asturias, and in late 1935, it seemed that the left was poised to return to public life. Rumours circulated that municipal councillors were set to resign and those elected in 1931 would return.¹³² The governor reasserted his authority by banning ‘the advertisement of newspapers in a coercive or scandalous way’ as part of a clampdown on leftist resurgence in Spain more widely.¹³³ Political meetings were still illegal, unions could not function under the UGT banner and arrests, searches of homes and military trials persisted.¹³⁴ Faced with this panorama, those tasked with preparing the groundwork for elections were women. Socialist deputy Matilde de la Torre urged Asturian women – who were ‘alone against the enemy’ – to engage in political activities, such as checking the electoral register for errors ahead of the elections.¹³⁵

The state of alarm was lifted in Asturias in early January and constitutional guarantees returned across the country. The return of the left was immediately felt, but attempts at restricting political expression and the threat of military power remained. Although ‘vivas!’ to socialism and revolution and red-shirted activists reappeared on the streets of Oviedo in jubilant expressions of left-wing political identity, the governor quickly banned the public display of political ideas ‘through shirts, insignias and gestures’. The measure did not explicitly target the left, but those arrested were left-wing activists.¹³⁶ More ominously, military manoeuvres continued in the province even as the election campaign was in full swing. The Foreign Legion marched through the streets of Oviedo accompanied by cries of ‘death to the socialists’, shooting practice occurred on a daily basis, and military manoeuvres took place overlooking Oviedo.¹³⁷ The threat of violence and the assertion of military power were present during the election campaign, even when constitutional guarantees were back in force.

Freed from censorship, a tide of articles in socialist La Tarde focused on the use of torture during the repression and paid close attention to the security forces’ use of violence during the election campaign.¹³⁸ Accompanying this denunciation of the repression and the euphoric public return of the left was the frisking of the opposition for arms. Rather than relying on the authorities, left-wing activists assumed the task of stopping opponents and searching them for weapons. Stripping opponents of weapons was humiliating, an assertion of power and a form of revenge, as well as an attempt to ensure personal safety. But it also revealed a fragility and anxiety that would be at the heart of radicalism during the Popular Front spring of 1936.

The long 1935 was a year of political half-life in which little was achieved at the national level or by the administrations in the coalfields. There was little will to provide an alternative vision of the Republic. Mining companies were content with sacking workers and allowing working conditions to deteriorate. Politics as order relied on the exclusion of the left, but also the spectre of revolution. The problem was that the repression was deep and widespread, yet it was not sufficiently protracted to do anything but temporarily disarticulate the Asturian left. This ensured that there would be a backlash in 1936 once the left returned to public political activity and to power after the elections. The insurrection and repression therefore reshaped politics prior to the Civil War. Amnesty was a powerful, popular banner for the Popular Front, while for the right the insurrection made the spectre of revolution very real indeed. But beyond the political campaigns, the insurrection and particularly the repression intensified the fragmentation of society. Personal affairs, refracted through the lens of the revolution, became public and politicized. The repression had politicized society in a particular way, which would become evident in 1936. It had been harshest in Asturias, but Asturias did not see the most widespread eruption of labour conflict or violence in 1936. Instead, the long 1935 configured a particular kind of fragile radicalism, which posed problems for Republican governance prior to the Civil War.

______________

¹ AHPA, AP, box 79458, file 138 (1935).

² On this period, see e.g., R. Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End (London, 2016).

³ T. Kirk, Nazism and the Working Class in Austria: Industrial Unrest and Political Dissent in the ‘National Community’ (Cambridge, 1996), the quotation at p. 41; R. Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: the Storm Troopers in Eastern Germany, 1925–1934 (New Haven, Conn., 1984), pp. 98–105; D. Schumann, Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918–1933: Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War (New York, 2012), p. 270.

⁴ E. López Ochoa, Campaña militar de Asturias en octubre de 1934 (narración táctica-episódica) (Madrid, 1936), pp. 163, 171.

⁵ See P. I. Taibo II, Asturias, octubre 1934 (Barcelona, 2013), p. 474.

⁶ For the ransacking of Tomás’s home, see M. Nelken, Por qué hicimos la revolución (Barcelona, 1936), p. 164.

⁷ S. Balfour, Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War (Oxford, 2002), pp. 253–4. See also P. Preston, The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain (London, 2012), p. 82; M. R. de Madariaga, Los moros que trajo Franco (Barcelona, 2006), pp. 139–43. For comments on the figures, see E. González Calleja, Cifras cruentas: las víctimas mortales de la violencia sociopolítica en la Segunda República española (1931–1936) (Granada, 2015), p. 229.

⁸ Taibo, Asturias, p. 475; M. Seidman, The Victorious Counterrevolution: the Nationalist Effort in the Spanish Civil War (Madison, Wis., 2011), p. 43.

⁹ Balfour, Deadly Embrace, p. 254.

¹⁰ Preston, Spanish Holocaust, p. 84; Taibo, Asturias, pp. 475, 513.

¹¹ Taibo, Asturias, p. 542.

¹² For a chronology of the states of exception, see E. González Calleja, En nombre de la autoridad: la defensa del orden público durante la Segunda República española (1931–1936) (Granada, 2014), pp. 329–31.

¹³ L. Manning, What I Saw in Spain (London, 1935), p. 86; R. Arlt, Aguafuertes (andaluzas, marroquíes, gallegas asturianas, vascas y madrileñas) (Paracuellos de Jarama, 2015), pp. 272–3.

¹⁴ Cited in Taibo, Asturias, p. 500.

¹⁵ The denunciations included detailed reports on the repression and were distributed as pamphlets (Los presos de Asturias, ¡Acusamos!... (n.p., 1935)) and reproduced in other accounts (e.g. Nelken, Por qué). For digital versions of the denunciations by Félix Gordón Ordás, Fernando de los Ríos, Julio Álvarez del Vayo and Vicente Marco Miranda, see <http://www.asturiasrepublicana.com/crirep.asp> [accessed 6 Nov. 2018]. See also Ignotus [M. Villar], La represión de octubre (Barcelona, 1936). For English versions, see Manning, What. In 1936 the newspaper Ayuda published a series of testimonies of torture and La Libertad reproduced a letter and the signatures of women attesting to its veracity on 4 Feb. 1936.

¹⁶ ¡Acusamos!, pp. 17–18. F. Gordón Ordás, ‘Por la salud del régimen. La represión en las provincias de Asturias, León y Palencia’, 11 Jan. 1935, available at <http://www.asturiasrepublicana.com/criticagordon3.html> [accessed 6 Nov. 2018].

¹⁷ Región, 2 Dec. 1934; AHPA, AP, box 79450, file 24 (1935); El Noroeste, 17 Feb. 1935. For a similar alleged suicide by drowning, see El Noroeste, 19 Dec. 1934. For further cases, including Teodomiro Menéndez, see Taibo, Asturias, pp. 551–2, 562.

¹⁸ El Noroeste, 19 Feb. 1935.

¹⁹ Preston, Spanish Holocaust, pp. 87–8; M. Castejón Rodríguez, ‘La patronal hullera asturiana en la Segunda República’ (unpublished UNED PhD thesis, 2009), pp. 420–1.

²⁰ González Calleja, En nombre, p. 234.

²¹ Gordón Ordás, ‘Por la salud’.

²² Taibo, Asturias, pp. 484–6.

²³ Taibo, Asturias, pp. 484–6.

²⁴ González Calleja, En nombre, p. 234; F. Aguado Sánchez, La revolución de octubre de 1934 (Madrid, 1972), p. 304; J. Rodríguez Muñoz, La revolución de Octubre de 1934 en Asturias: orígenes, desarrollo y consecuencias (Oviedo, 2010), p. 714.

²⁵ N. Townson, The Crisis of Democracy in Spain: Centrist Politics under the Spanish Second Republic (Brighton, 2000), pp. 273–4. See also B. Díaz Nosty, La comuna asturiana: revolución de octubre de 1934 (Bilbao, 1974), p. 350.

²⁶ M. Benavides, La revolución fue así (octubre rojo y negro) (Barcelona, 1935), p. 460.

²⁷ For a summary, see Gerwarth, Vanquished, ch. 9. For Germany, see M. Jones, Founding Weimar: Violence and the German Revolution, 1918 – 19 (Cambridge, 2016).

²⁸ Bessel, Political Violence, pp. 102–3; D. Siemens, Stormtroopers: a New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts (New Haven, Conn., 2017), pp. 333–4.

²⁹ Avance, 3 July 1936.

³⁰ Región, 3 Feb. 1935.

³¹ Taibo, Asturias, p. 482.

³² El Noroeste, 15 Nov. 1934.

³³ Boletín oficial de la provincia de Oviedo, 5 Dec. 1934.

³⁴ E.g. Región, 25 Apr., 4 May 1935; La Tarde, 24 June 1935.

³⁵ López Ochoa, Campaña, pp. 175–6.

³⁶ Taibo, Asturias, p. 482; Región, 13 Dec. 1934; El Noroeste, 25 Dec. 1934.

³⁷ F. Rey, Paisanos en lucha: exclusión política y violencia en la Segunda República española (Madrid, 2008), p. 439; J. M. Macarro Vera, Socialismo, República y revolución en Andalucía (1931–1936) (Seville, 2000), pp. 373–4.

³⁸ R. Purkiss, Democracy,Trade Unions and PoliticalViolence in Spain: theValencian Anarchist Movement, 1918–1936 (Brighton, 2011), pp. 322–4. For Galicia, see J. Prada Rodríguez, De la agitación republicana a la represión franquista (Ourense 1934–1939) (Barcelona, 2006), p. 63.

³⁹ Townson, Crisis, p. 279.

⁴⁰ C. Benito del Pozo, El ayuntamiento republicano de Oviedo, 1931 – 1936 (Oviedo, 1989), p. 110.

⁴¹ L. Borque López, El magisterio primario en Asturias (1923–1937): sociedad y educación (Oviedo, 1991), pp. 206, 209.

⁴² AHPA, Actas de la comisión de la Diputación Provincial, 19 Sept. 1933 to 17 Sept. 1935, ff. 308–12.

⁴³ E.g. for Andalusia, Macarro Vera, Socialismo, p. 371.

⁴⁴ S. Valero, Republicanos con la monarquía, socialistas con la República: la Federación Socialista Valenciana durante la II República y la Guerra Civil (1931–1939) (Valencia, 2015), p. 150.

⁴⁵ Gaceta de Madrid, 3 Nov. 1934.

⁴⁶ For updates, see Región, 24 Feb. 1935; El Noroeste, 27 Feb., 17 Apr., 22 Oct. 1935.

⁴⁷ Taibo, Asturias, pp. 474–5; Ignotus [M. Villar], La represión de octubre, p. 244.

⁴⁸ Región, 30 Nov. 1934; El Noroeste, 30 Nov. 1934.

⁴⁹ El Noroeste, 6, 15 Nov. 1934.

⁵⁰ El Noroeste, 11 Dec. 1934; A. Camín, El valle negro (México, 1938), p. 104.

⁵¹ See the testimony of Á. Flórez Peón in Memorias de Ángeles Flórez Peón “Maricuela” (Oviedo, 2009), p. 36.

⁵² El Noroeste, 21, 30 March 1935.

⁵³ El Noroeste, 10, 22 March 1935.

⁵⁴ El Noroeste, 26 June, 28, 30 July 1935.

⁵⁵ El Noroeste, 15, 30 Nov. 1934.

⁵⁶ Región, 20 Nov. 1934; El Noroeste, 9 Apr. 1935.

⁵⁷ Región, 20 Nov. 1934.

⁵⁸ For denunciation, see Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789–1989 (Chicago, Ill., 1997), ed. S. Fitzpatrick and R. Gellately. For Spain, see P. Anderson, The Francoist Military Trials: Terror and Complicity, 1939–1945 (New York, 2010). For the money, see El Noroeste, 2 Jan. 1936.

⁵⁹ Confidential note, Madrid, 14 Nov. 1934, CDMH, PS Gijón, J series, box 50, file 1; letter to Commander Doval from a worker from Santa Ana, 12 Nov., 1934, CDMH, PS Gijón, J series, box 50, file 1; untitled, undated, handwritten note [statement by Pilar Bernaldo de Quirós], CDMH, PS Gijón, J series, box 50, file 1.

⁶⁰ AHPA, AP, box 78442, file 15 (1935).

⁶¹ El Noroeste, 17 Nov. 1934.

⁶² AHPA, AP, box 78438, file 158 (1935).

⁶³ Región, 25 July 1935.

⁶⁴ AHPA, AP, box 78437, file 178 (1935).

⁶⁵ Letter to Commander Doval from El Entrego, 24 Nov. 1934, CDMH, PS Gijón, J series, box 50, file 1.

⁶⁶ Letter to Commander Doval from a worker from Santa Ana, 12 Nov. 1934 and untitled, undated, handwritten note [statement by Pilar Bernaldo de Quirós], CDMH, PS Gijón, J series, box 50, file 1.

⁶⁷ Á. Garralda García, La persecución religiosa del clero en Asturias 1934, 1936 y 1937: martirios y odiseas (Avilés, 2009 [1977]), pp. 405–7, 463, 546.

⁶⁸ P. Anderson, ‘Singling out victims: denunciation and collusion in the post-Civil War Francoist repression in Spain, 1939–1945’, European History Quarterly, xxxix (2009), 7–26, at p. 12. For these themes in the context of the Second World War, see also J. Gross, Revolution from Abroad: the Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton, N.J., 2002).

⁶⁹ AHPA, AP, box 78437, file 167 (1935).

⁷⁰ As Kalyvas warned, it is important not to assume that the master cleavage maps onto local cleavages in civil wars (S. Kalyvas, ‘The ontology of “political violence”: action and identity in civil wars’, Perspectives on Politics, i (2003), 475–94).

⁷¹ M. Perry, ‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson: Her Ideas, Movements and World (Manchester, 2015), pp. 302–7, the quotations at p. 305.

⁷² Región, 16 Nov. 1934. See also protests by business leaders and the JAP (El Noroeste, 16, 17 Nov. 1934). For their reception in Britain, see H. García, The Truth About Spain! Mobilizing British Public Opinion, 1936–1939 (Brighton, 2010), p. 26.

⁷³ B. D. Bunk, Ghosts of Passion: Martyrdom, Gender, and the origins of the Spanish Civil War (Durham, N.C., 2007), p. 51.

⁷⁴ For these discourses during the Civil War, particularly the nationalistic component, see X. M. Núñez Seixas, ¡Fuera el invasor! nacionalismos y movilización bélica durante la guerra civil española (1936–1939) (Madrid, 2006).

⁷⁵ For a discussion of the gendered readings of the insurrection, see Bunk, Ghosts, ch. 4.

⁷⁶ Región, 11 Nov. 1934.

⁷⁷ Región, 12, 30 Nov. 1934.

⁷⁸ The council sent a telegram to the minister of the interior in protest (Región, 3 Nov. 1934; AO, Actas, 16 June 1933 to 16 June 1934, ff. 71–2, f. 119).

⁷⁹ Región, 19 June 1935.

⁸⁰ Townson, Crisis, p. 284.

⁸¹ García, Truth, pp. 26–7; for Bolín’s account, see L. Bolín, Spain: the Vital Years (London, 1967), pp. 135–6. Reports included Spain, October 1934 (Paris, 1935); L. Araquistáin, ‘The October Revolution in Spain’, Foreign Affairs, xiii (1935), 247–61.

⁸² R. Cruz, En el nombre del pueblo: república, rebelión y guerra en la España de 1936 (Madrid, 2006), pp. 70ff.

⁸³ E.g. Los mártires de Turón; Llano, Pequeños anales; Molins i Fábrega, UHP; Díaz Fernández published his account under the pseudonym José Canel, see J. Canel [J. Díaz Fernández], Octubre rojo en Asturias (Barcelona, 1984 [1935]).

⁸⁴ Región, 2, 3, 4, 7 Aug. 1935.

⁸⁵ Región, 21 March 1935.

⁸⁶ AO, Actas, 22 June 1934 to 10 Jan. 1936, f. 140. See also Región, 31 Jan. 1935.

⁸⁷ Región, 15, 17, 18, 25 May 1935; El Noroeste, 25 Sept., 8 Nov. 1935.

⁸⁸ El Noroeste, 23 July 1935.

⁸⁹ Región, 27 Nov. 1934.

⁹⁰ For example, El Noroeste, 27 Dec. 1934, 30 Apr., 7 June 1935; Región, 18 Sept. 1935. For the authorities’ response, see El Noroeste, 2 Apr. 1935; Región, 20 Sept. 1935; J. M. García de Tuñón Aza, Apuntes para una historia de la Falange asturiana (Oviedo, 2001), p. 39.

⁹¹ La Tarde, 8 July 1935.

⁹² Región, 11 Jan. 1936.

⁹³ For a similar return of religious personnel in Andalusia, see Macarro Vera, Socialismo, p. 371.

⁹⁴ See the decision to consult lawyers on the cemetery in Langreo, while the ban on Catholic funeral processions was revoked in San Martín del Rey Aurelio (AL, Actas, 23 June 1934 to 12 Sept. 1935, f. 79; Región, 2 Jan., 23 March 1935).

⁹⁵ Región, 28 March 1935; El Noroeste, 5, 27 Apr. 1935.

⁹⁶ At the time, it was feeding 220 children (El Noroeste, 14 Apr. 1935). For earlier appeals, see El Noroeste, 21 Feb., 6 Apr. 1935.

⁹⁷ Castejón Rodríguez, ‘La patronal’, pp. 427–8.

⁹⁸ Arboleya’s letter is cited in D. Benavides, El fracaso social del catolicismo español: Arboleya Martínez, 1870 – 1951 (Barcelona, 1973), p. 555.

⁹⁹ Benavides, El fracaso, pp. 618–19, 627, 629–32.

¹⁰⁰ J. R. Montero, La CEDA: el catolicismo social y político en la II República (2 vols, Madrid, 1977), i. 374.

¹⁰¹ Acción, 28 Dec. 1935; Región, 24 July, 13 Oct. 1935.

¹⁰² Montero, CEDA, ii. 576–80.

¹⁰³ Región, 13, 28 Dec. 1934, 20 July 1935; El Noroeste, 14 Feb. 1935.

¹⁰⁴ Región, 24 July 1935.

¹⁰⁵ Región, 6 Oct., 10 Dec. 1935.

¹⁰⁶ On strikes in 1935, see Castejón Rodríguez, ‘La patronal’, pp. 421–2, 427, 429.

¹⁰⁷ Taibo, Asturias, pp. 578–80.

¹⁰⁸ See J. R. Montero, La CEDA: el catolicismo social y político en la II República (2 vols, Madrid, 1977), ii. 173–207; J. Tusell, Historia de la democracia cristiana en España (2 vols, Madrid, 1974), i. 282–312.

¹⁰⁹ E.g. much hand-wringing regarding poverty and unemployment only resulted in a desultory amount spent on public works (Townson, Crisis, p. 281).

¹¹⁰ Taibo, Asturias, pp. 545–6.

¹¹¹ Taibo, Asturias, pp. 533, 593; La Tarde, 4 May 1936. They were looked after by the International Mining Federation (J. S. Vidarte, El bienio negro y la insurrección de Asturias (Barcelona, 1978), p. 416).

¹¹² See the letter from Mariano Moreno Mateos to Juan Simeón Vidarte, 23 Dec. 1934, in Vidarte, El bienio, pp. 331–2; L. Branciforte, El Socorro Rojo Internacional en España (1923 – 1939): relatos de la solidaridad antifascista (Madrid, 2009), pp. 160–3; A. Elorza and M. Bizcarrondo, Queridos camaradas: la Internacional Comunista y España, 1919 – 1939 (Barcelona, 1999), p. 229; letter to an unnamed ‘comrade’ from the SRI National Executive Committee, 15 Apr. 1935, in AHPA, AP, box 78446, file 62 (1935).

¹¹³ For the National Committee and SRI, see Branciforte, El Socorro. For Asturias, see Letter from Rufino García to SRI Central Committee, 29 March 1935, AHPA, AP, box 78446, file 62 (1935).

¹¹⁴ M. A. Mateos, ¡Salud, compañeras! Mujeres socialistas en Asturias (1900–1937) (Oviedo, 2007), p. 181. For the authorities clamping down on the left, see e.g., El Norooeste, 20 Aug., 8 Oct. 1935; AHPA, AP, box 78446, file 62 (1935).

¹¹⁵ See L. Branciforte, ‘Legitimando la solidaridad femenina internacional: el Socorro Rojo’, Arenal, xvi (2009), 27–52, at pp. 43, 45–6; F. Erice, ‘Mujeres comunistas: la militancia femenina en el comunismo asturiano, de los orígenes al final del franquismo’, in Los comunistas en Asturias (1920–1982), ed. F. Erice (Gijón, 1996), especially p. 322; Mateos, ¡Salud, compañeras!, p. 181; Ayuda. Portavoz de la solidaridad, 27 Feb. 1936. For Ibárruri’s versión, see D. Ibárruri, Memorias de Dolores Ibárruri, Pasionaria: la lucha y la vida (Barcelona, 1985), pp. 187–90.

¹¹⁶ E.g. Prieto’s articles were collected in Documentos socialistas: escritos de Indalecio Prieto, Ramón González Peña, Toribio Echevarría, Amador Fernández, Antonio Llaneza, Alejandro Jaume, Francisco Torquemada, jóvenes presos de Asturias y de Madrid, etc., etc., ed. I. Prieto (Madrid, n.d.). For Caballerista criticism, see C. de Baráibar, Las falsas “posiciones socialistas” de Indalecio Prieto (Madrid, 1935) and for criticism of Caballero, see G. M. de Coca, Anti-Caballero: crítica marxista de la bolchevización del partido socialista (1930–1936) (Madrid, 1975 [1936]).

¹¹⁷ J. Aróstegui, Largo Caballero: el tesón y la quimera (Barcelona, 2013), p. 379.

¹¹⁸ H. Graham, Socialism and War: the Spanish Socialist Party in Power and Crisis, 1936–1939 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 20; letter from Prieto to the Executive Commission of the PSOE, 23 March 1935, in Prieto, Documentos, pp. 19–26.

¹¹⁹ This summary of a complicated struggle is based on Aróstegui, Largo Caballero, pp. 379–417; Graham, Socialism, pp. 20–4. See also S. Juliá, La izquierda del PSOE (1935–1936) (Madrid, 1977), pp. 5–28; P. Heywood, Marxism and the Failure of Organised Socialism in Spain, 1879–1936 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 164–7.

¹²⁰ Graham, Socialism, p. 19.

¹²¹ G.-R. Horn, European Socialists Respond to Fascism: Ideology, Activism and Contingency in the 1930s (New York, 1996), pp. 98–101; J. Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–38 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 22–51.

¹²² For this emphasis on the people, see J. Wardhaugh, In Pursuit of the People: Political Culture in France, 1934–1939 (Basingstoke, 2009), Bastille Day at p. 84.

¹²³ For the full text of Octubre: segunda etapa, see C. Ramírez, Balance de una ruptura: los socialistas en el gobierno, en la guerra y en la revolución (Madrid, 2012), pp. 277–328.

¹²⁴ For the quotation, see Graham, Socialism, p. 18. Letter from Ruperto García et al to Francisco Largo Caballero, Jan. 1936, CDMH, PS Madrid, box 2371.

¹²⁵ For the letter from the socialist prisoners in the model prison of Oviedo to the Executive Commission of the National Federation of the Socialist Youth, see Prieto, Documentos, pp. 179–87.

¹²⁶ Aróstegui, Largo Caballero, p. 388. Prieto in fact claimed to have requested the removal of criticism of Largo Caballero from the letter (letter from Prieto to Negrín, 26 June 1935, in Prieto, Documentos, p. 112).

¹²⁷ See P. Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform, Reaction and Revolution in the Second Republic (London, 1978), p. 136; letter from Francisco Largo Caballero to Graciano Antuña, 25 Mar. 1935, CDMH, PS Madrid, box 2371.

¹²⁸ Letter from Ruperto García et al. to Francisco Largo Caballero, Jan. 1936, CDMH, PS Madrid, box 2371.

¹²⁹ Townson, Crisis, pp. 315–29, 332–7.

¹³⁰ Preston, Coming of the Spanish Civil War, pp. 165–71; Townson, Crisis, pp. 336–8.

¹³¹ E. González Calleja, Contrarrevolucionarios: radicalización violenta de las derechas durante la Segunda República, 1931–1936 (Madrid, 2011), p. 298.

¹³² E.g. Asturias, 21 Dec. 1935; El Noroeste, 21, 29 Dec. 1935.

¹³³ El Noroeste, 21 Dec. 1935; González Calleja, En nombre, p. 240.

¹³⁴ El Noroeste, 1, 4, 10, 17, 19 Dec. 1935; M. Bizcarrondo, ‘Democracia y revolución en la estrategia socialista de la Segunda República’, Estudios de Historia Social, xvi–xvii (1981), 227–459, at p. 344.

¹³⁵ Asturias, 23 Nov. 1935; Mateos, ¡Salud, compañeras!, pp. 184–5.

¹³⁶ Región, 12, 14, 16, 29 Jan. 1936.

¹³⁷ Región, 7 Jan., 1 Feb. 1936; La Tarde, 13 Jan. 1936; El Noroeste, 9, 14 Feb. 1936.

¹³⁸ E.g. La Tarde, 15 Jan., 5, 10 Feb. 1936.