7. A fragile radicalism: the Popular Front spring of 1936

A week of spring rain had not dampened spirits. When Ramón González Peña stepped off the train at Puente de los Fierros on Sunday 1 March 1936, an enthusiastic crowd greeted his return to Asturias with applause. After paying homage to the dead of October 1934 in Mieres, he travelled to Oviedo, which he had to enter on foot due to the number of people on the streets. La Tarde hailed his return as the homecoming of the true voice of the Asturian people, while the occupation of the streets of Oviedo by the working class revealed the province to be ‘red Asturias’.¹ This image of the working class asserting itself in public spaces is typical of both the French and Spanish popular fronts in 1936. In France, the massive strike wave of June 1936 that greeted the electoral victory of the French Popular Front was a jubilant celebration of working-class strength, identity and visibility, even as the rise of right-wing leagues and street violence posed serious problems for French political life. Yet as hope grew towards an ‘apotheosis’ in France in July, in Spain the mood was very different.² Political and social polarization, violence, strikes and right-wing conspiracies mean that the five months that separate the general elections of February 1936 and the July military coup form one of the most complex periods in Spanish history.

The shadow of the Civil War looms large over the spring of 1936 and debating responsibility for the conflict continues to shape historiographical debate. According to the Francoist narrative, the Popular Front spring was a period of chaos and desgobierno (misgovernment or lack of government authority) remedied by a military intervention that saved Spain from Communist revolution. The Communist conspiracy was a fabrication, although substantial levels of protest and violence across the country – labelled by Stanley Payne as the ‘most famous civil disturbance in Spanish history’ – were not.³ A particular point of contention is the role of the government. Gabriele Ranzato and Payne depicted the Popular Front governments as fluctuating between impotence, unwillingness to guarantee order and facilitation of a revolutionary process.⁴ Eduardo González Calleja criticized this recurrent cliché of Popular Front ‘chaos’ and ‘misgovernment’ for neglecting the government’s attempts to curb violence.⁵

While there was an increase in political violence (estimates of the number of fatalities range from 270 to 450), the spring of 1936 was not a period of chaos in Asturias, nor did the region see the development of a proto-revolutionary movement.⁶ The legacy of the insurrection and the long 1935 conditioned the nature of politics in the province, as it did in Spain more widely. There was a clear crisis of community evident in purges, boycotts and the vigilance of the security forces, which contributed to a renewed radicalism. This radicalism was nevertheless fragile, defensive and inwardly focused, as political groups, trade unions and workplaces tried to rearticulate communities broken by the repression. Leftist militias, distrustful of the state, took the policing of the Republic into their own hands, in defence of the Popular Front and their own understanding of the Republican project.

Elections

On 15 January 1936, the Republican Left (IR), Republican Union (UR), PSOE, communists (the PCE and the POUM) and the Syndicalist Party signed the Popular Front agreement. Hardly radical, the pact was a return to the spirit of freedom and justice that had inspired the Republican–socialist governments of the first biennium. The agreement promised agrarian and education reform and an amnesty for those imprisoned for ‘political and social crimes’. In contrast to the first biennium, however, the pact promised only an electoral agreement. The Republicans would occupy government office on their own. Accordingly, the Republican parties were assigned a greater number of candidates on the joint election tickets than other parties in order to bolster the stability of a future Republican government.⁷

The right, consisting of the CEDA, the monarchists of Renovación Española, the Carlist Traditionalist Communion and the still-minuscule FE-JONS, was not united by a similar commonly-agreed programme or coalition at a national level. The CEDA, as in 1933, was pragmatic and willing to negotiate with different groups to form provincial-level ‘anti-revolutionary fronts’ and in Asturias the CEDA repeated the joint candidacy with the PRLD.⁸ Backed by huge funds, the CEDA mounted a modern mass propaganda campaign across the country, producing 2.7 million posters and fifty million flyers with forty different designs. The elections were framed as an ‘apocalyptic struggle’ for the soul of the country.⁹ Región warned readers they faced a choice of ‘death or life’ and ‘peace or revolution’. The left represented ‘freemasonry, separatism, revolution, Marxism, hunger, death’, while the CEDA embodied ‘religion, national unity, prosperity, social justice, work, peace’.¹⁰ Contrasting the Spanish nation, peace and prosperity with the alleged destruction heralded by ‘Marxism’, along with insinuating that Moscow controlled the Popular Front, provided some of the ingredients for the future political culture of Francoism forged during the Civil War.¹¹

The legacy of the insurrection and the repression was central to the sharply polarized atmosphere during the election campaign. The country was divided between the Popular Front and anti-revolutionary fronts, which squeezed out Prime Minister Portela Valladares’s attempt at a centrist electoral slate. The situation was tense, and twenty-five people lost their lives in violent incidents.¹² Despite having been the scene of the insurrection, Asturias was absent from the list of provinces with fatalities, although there were scuffles and violent encounters between opposing political groups. Activists pasting up CEDA posters exchanged shots with their political opponents while a man in a bar in Pola de Laviana was stabbed for refusing to shout ‘death to fascism!’¹³ The Catholic Youth in Sama claimed its leaders had received death threats and that one of its members had been attacked.¹⁴

The ballots held on 16 February delivered a narrow victory for the Popular Front. Neither the Popular Front nor the right polled more than 50 per cent of the votes, but the system, which favoured coalitions, meant that the Popular Front obtained a clear majority in parliament with 265 seats. This grew to 285 in May once elections had been rerun in areas where there had been irregularities. Particularly significant in facilitating the victory of the Popular Front was the CNT. In a marked change from 1933, there had been few anarchist calls for abstention and the promise of amnesty was a powerful call for the supporters and family members of those who had been jailed in the wake of October 1934.¹⁵ The left republicans of IR and UR gained 125 seats between them, followed by the socialists with ninety-nine seats. The PCE experienced a substantial increase in influence by adding fifteen deputies to their existing representative. The parties in government between 1933 and 1935 fared badly. The scandal-ridden Radicals collapsed from over 100 deputies to just five. The CEDA did better, but losing twenty-seven seats and dropping to eighty-eight deputies was a disaster insofar as it did not deliver ‘all power to the jefe!’ as posters had demanded. There was no electoral breakthrough for the fascist party, FE-JONS. Its leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, lost his seat (which left the party without representation in the Cortes) and associated parliamentary immunity.¹⁶

On the announcement of the first results in the early hours of 17 February, Gil Robles visited Prime Minister Portela Valladares to persuade him to declare martial law rather than hand power to the Popular Front. He was joined by the chief of staff, Franco, who attempted to organize a military uprising but failed. Portela Valladares resisted the pressure but had been unsettled enough to transfer power to Azaña’s new administration earlier than planned.¹⁷ After this initial threat to Republican democracy, Gil Robles and the CEDA were subdued, for the party was in chaos. Their accidentalist strategy lay in tatters. The results reaffirmed many supporters’ ‘disgust’ with democracy and they started to turn their backs on the CEDA.¹⁸ Support in Salamanca ‘evaporated almost overnight’ and the party was ‘thrown into turmoil’.¹⁹

In Asturias, the Popular Front achieved a clear victory on a provincial level, with 170,000 votes over 150,000 for the CEDA-PRLD, that was reflected in Oviedo and the coalfields.²⁰ The exception in the latter was Aller, where the Popular Front fell a thousand votes short of the CEDA-PRLD, although in all municipalities the rightist slate continued to attract a significant minority of voters. While approximately a fifth of the vote went to the CEDA-PRLD in Mieres and Langreo, this rose to over a quarter in San Martín del Rey Aurelio and Laviana and increased further up the valleys in rural areas.²¹ Compared to the 150,000 votes for the CEDA-PRLD list, FE-JONS candidates received only a handful of votes.²² Their supporters lived in Gijón (112 votes) and Oviedo (52), rather than the coalfields: Falangists received nine votes in Mieres, five in Langreo, two in Aller and none in Laviana or San Martín del Rey Aurelio.²³

Despite the Popular Front victory, the number of right-wing votes was again disconcerting for left-wing activists. As in 1933, they tried to account for the number of CEDA-PRLD votes. Leftists were perplexed that a class-based analysis failed to explain the results. In Ciaño-Santa Ana, the 113 votes for the right far exceeded the eight local business owners. Thirty-five votes for the right in Veneros (Langreo) were explained away as men who ‘let themselves be beaten by weaknesses’, including selling their ballot for a job. Yet in contrast to the reaction to the previous elections, the rhetoric had a harder edge in 1936. Voting for the right was a betrayal of the local community. It was now the responsibility of the town to ‘unmask’ these ‘cowards’ and ‘traitors’.²⁴ Violence was absent from the coalfields, but there were incidents of retributive acts accompanying victory across Spain, from stones thrown at buildings to cases of assault.²⁵

The dominant tone in the streets – and in the prisons – was nevertheless the exuberant celebration of victory by Popular Front supporters. In the uncertain political interregnum following the elections and before the promised amnesty was decreed, there were riots in some prisons across the country, including in Oviedo, where the newly elected PCE deputy Dolores Ibárruri negotiated the freeing of prisoners on 20 February to diffuse the tense situation.²⁶ Those released paraded around Oviedo in a joyous and peaceful demonstration of victory. According to La Voz de Asturias, there were more people on the streets of the capital the following day than during a holiday. Singing crowds flocked to the station to greet SOMA leader Amador Fernández, who had been in exile in France and Belgium, and in the evening, the municipal band played. It seemed ‘for a moment [that] the face of the city had changed completely’.²⁷ The former prisoners returned to the coalfields to a rapturous welcome from friends and families who deserted mines and workshops to greet them.²⁸

The image of joyous, singing crowds celebrating a victory that promised justice via state-led reform appeared to hark back to the first biennium. In addition, the recovery of left-wing political and cultural life seemed to indicate a return to pre-insurrection modes of being. Casas del Pueblo reopened and councillors who had been removed from office due to the insurrection regained their seats. A large audience witnessed the first meetings of the reinstated councils in Langreo and San Martín del Rey Aurelio.²⁹ Sensitive to the abrupt shift in political winds, mining and steel companies announced the readmission of workers fired after the insurrection before they were required to do so.³⁰ Municipal councils reinstated former employees and sacked those appointed after October 1934, annulled previous appointments and agreed monetary compensation for workers suspended after the insurrection, which symbolically reversed decisions taken by the local authorities in 1934 and 1935.³¹ There was a renewed secularizing impulse across Spain manifest in initiatives like taxes on bell-ringing, a refusal to sponsor town fiestas and the removal of religious personnel from state-run welfare institutions.³² In short, there appeared to be a return to life prior to October 1934. As Ramón García Montes, who was a child in the Asturian coalfields at the time, recalled, the ‘life of our family returned to normal. Everything began to function as it had before the revolution’.³³ Yet the insurrection and repression had fractured communities in the coal valleys. There could be no return to the status quo ante.

Fractured communities

The shadow of October 1934 was ever present in 1936. The insurrection formed a key component of Asturian leftist identity on an individual and collective level that was invoked in speeches and in the press. Speaking to the crowd gathered in Oviedo to celebrate 1 May, the civil governor recalled the insurrectionary fallen and claimed their ‘martyrdom and death [had] made possible the re-conquest of the Republic’.³⁴ For activists, the insurrection constituted the central marker not only of their radical credentials, but also of leftist – and by extension working class – identification in 1936. Previously they had reeled off their participation in strikes or boasted of their anticlericalism when defending themselves in the press; now they invoked the insurrection and repression.³⁵

Political parties, trade unions and workforces conducted investigations and internal purges which probed conduct during the insurrection and the long 1935. The PCE cell in Sama met to judge the conduct of ‘comrade Damián’ for a statement he had signed when interrogated after the insurrection. Recognizing that this was ‘a weakness that Bolsheviks must not have’, he apologized and insisted that he had not informed on anyone. The cell, after hearing that Damián was a good comrade who had fought well in the insurrection, decided to express its disappointment but not to expel him.³⁶ Although such ‘self-criticism’ formed part of Communist techniques for enforcing party discipline and standards of conduct, the purges and investigations were not limited to Communist political culture.³⁷ Socialist Party and trade union sections organized assemblies to discuss and judge the conduct of members over the previous months and years.³⁸ Even leaders were scrutinized. The Socialist Group in Oviedo examined the conduct of eminent figures such as Manuel Vigil Montoto (the ‘father’ of Asturian socialism), Teodomiro Menéndez and Lorenzo López Mulero, the mayor of Oviedo.³⁹ Mining workforces also met to debate the conduct of their fellow workers during the repression and the election campaign.⁴⁰

The purges could appear to be the result of the appeals by sectors of the JS for the ‘Bolchevization’ of the socialist movement in 1935. There were certainly increasing ties between the socialists and Communists in the labour and youth movements, although in different ways. Communists recognized the predominance of socialism in trade union organizing and their own failure, by agreeing to dissolve their own unions and join the socialist organizations at the end of the 1935. Communist SUM members affiliated to the SOMA.⁴¹ The JS, meanwhile, had come increasingly under the influence of the Third International. Negotiations between the JS and the JC culminated in the merger of the two organizations in 1936 to form the United Socialist Youth under a decidedly Communist line.⁴² At the Asturian JS congress in April, reformists received a barrage of criticism.⁴³ Yet the purges of spring 1936 in the coalfields – whether in trade unions, party sections or at the workplace – overflowed any narrow attempt at ‘Bolchevization’ tied to particular political objectives. The purges and investigations were instead part of a broader crisis of the left and the community.

The purges were fuelled by allegations about members’ and neighbours’ conduct that circulated through rumours and whispering campaigns. The JS treasurer in La Moral was accused – falsely, it would later prove – of supplying arms to the security forces during the repression while the secretary of the Socialist Group in Siero declared himself the victim of a ‘defamatory campaign’, which included accusations of theft.⁴⁴ The potential consequences of the whispers were serious and could include expulsion from the union, or social ostracism. A younger mineworker accused of signing a petition in support of death sentences for revolutionaries received threats and contemplated suicide.⁴⁵ These whispering campaigns were not a brief flurry after the elections, but continued through the spring and into the summer.

To counter the rumours, the accused frequently turned to the press in order to appeal for public opinion to judge the matter. Frustrated at the allegations and snide comments directed at his wife and children, the secretary of the Socialist Group in Siero called on the ‘people of Siero’ to judge him.⁴⁶ Similarly, a civil guard ‘comrade’ wrote to La Tarde to end rumours about his brother, a municipal policeman, appealing to ‘all citizens and comrades’ to present evidence so that ‘public opinion’ could judge his conduct.⁴⁷ In these appeals, public opinion was coterminous with the left-wing community, endorsement from which would save the individual from ostracism. As the appeals recognized, investigations into an individual’s conduct offered the possibility of absolution or redemption. The assemblies were a mechanism for remaking ties within a particular Socialist Group, trade union section or workforce. Through demonstrating one’s innocence to comrades or neighbours, an individual could, in theory at least, absolve him or herself and re-join a political group or be symbolically re-accepted into the community.

One of the difficulties for the accused was the retrospective application of standards of behaviour that did not account for the murky realities and pressures of the long 1935. Many, like Damián, had not lived up to the standards later demanded in 1936, whether due to fear, torture, indiscipline, personal relationships and loyalties, opportunism or even a shift in political outlook. A common self-defence strategy was to claim to have been duped into attending an AP rally or joining a right-wing union in 1935.⁴⁸ These assertions were probably a way of backpedalling fast now that the political context had shifted again.

The rumours, vehement public defences and expulsions reveal the profound crisis of community caused by the experience of the insurrection and repression. This crisis was also manifest in forms of public ostracism that revealed how difficult it was for opposing groups to occupy the same social spaces in 1936. SOMA members in Mieres were instructed to leave a bar if mineworkers who had obtained jobs after October 1934 entered and the owner refused to expel them.⁴⁹ The retreat of politics to the local sphere in order to grapple with the crisis of community is also evident in other contexts of political crisis. In working-class districts of Berlin, for example, as Swett observed, there was a shift to ‘neighbourhood forms of justice’, including shunning, as a defensive response to the economic and political crisis of the early 1930s. This retrenchment was a way of asserting power over an arena that activists could control – or at least attempt to do so.⁵⁰

The threat of an economic sanction issued to the bar owner in Mieres carried echoes of a similar strategy that was particularly prevalent in 1936 – that of boycotting particular businesses. Boycotts were a form of economic ostracism as public collective punishment through the deliberate, collective cessation of normal patterns of consumption, with women heavily involved. Boycotts were not new in 1936, but they reached a scale and organization hitherto unseen.⁵¹ Boycotts were organized for political reasons, which usually centred on an individual’s role in the repression, or the way they voted or campaigned for opponents during the election campaign. Women in La Felguera tried to prevent female market-sellers from the neighbouring municipality of Siero from hawking their produce in La Felguera for allegedly having voted for the right.⁵² The JS in Bimenes called for the boycott of two business owners, one of whom was accused of doing ‘what he could to condemn us so that we rotted in prison’ in 1935.⁵³ As a strategy, boycotts were not limited to the left: a female baker in Oviedo suffered a boycott for having spoken in support of the Popular Front. A committee of socialist women retaliated by calling on couriers to stop delivering bread to the women who objected to the baker.⁵⁴ The latter did not constitute a boycott in the strict sense of the word; rather the term had developed into a byword for ostracism or a collective economic sanction.

The distinctiveness of boycotts in 1936 lay not just in their number, but their high degree of organization and the fact that they functioned, like the purges, as a form of popular justice. Far from ad hoc measures, left-wing boycotts were formalized and rationalized. The Socialist and Communist Youths in Langreo issued ‘certificates’ for market-sellers so that ‘every good citizen, left-wing man or woman’ could ensure they bought from a ‘reputable’ supplier.⁵⁵ There were boycott commissions, meetings, and justifications of boycotts printed in the press.⁵⁶ Boycotts tended to be local affairs, but there were some limited attempts to organize them on a wider basis. Socialists from Langreo appealed to all Asturian working-class political and union organizations to send them information on which businesses they should boycott.⁵⁷

The boycott commissions developed elaborate procedures which mimicked aspects of a trial. In June, the Sotrondio boycott commission organized an assembly attended by delegates from thirty-four organizations to discuss the cases of Manuel Ordiz and Manuel Álvarez. Those present agreed to uphold the boycott against Ordiz, who was accused of reporting individuals to the authorities and blackmailing others with the threat of denunciation, and decreed a boycott against Álvarez for collaborating with the authorities by identifying revolutionaries. Attendees heard pre-trial reports, evidence was presented and heard from both sides, there was a face-to-face confrontation (careo), and the accused was allowed to defend himself. The case ended with a sentence, which could later be revised.⁵⁸ This formal mechanism of community justice identified local citizens, as represented by delegates from local organizations, as sovereign in these matters.

Imitating legal procedure attempted to show fairness and logic – at least in the eyes of the organizers. Boycotts were punitive and divided communities but, like the investigations into militants’ conduct, they did allow redemption and re-integration into the community. Boycotts were an orderly, non-violent and circumscribed strategy. Once a sentence had been served, a boycott could be lifted.⁵⁹ They channelled desires for revenge and served as an attempt to remake communities in spring 1936 after their fracturing in the insurrection and repression. A boycott was a strategy for defending the working class and asserting leftist power, yet the militancy was undercut by fragility. Boycotts meant a retrenchment to combatting divisions in their own communities. This was an inward-facing radicalism.

It is difficult to see how the targets of boycotts, whose livelihoods were under threat, could consider a time-limited sentence as just or magnanimous, or the rhetoric as anything less than threatening given its militant edge. Socialist trade unions in Langreo declared their intention ‘to boycott and sink all businessmen and professionals who during the period of persecution and ignominy suffered by the Spanish people served as snitches and stalwarts of reaction’.⁶⁰ The Antifascist Popular Front in Trubia instructed that the working class must not ‘contribute with your money to enrich the murderers of the working class. All-out war on those who betray our class aspirations’.⁶¹ Boycotts bred greater animosity towards the left and were symptoms of the chaos and desgobierno of the Popular Front. The quasi-judicial role adopted by boycott commissions seemed to show left-wing organizations’ usurpation of the state, or the latter’s abdication, in its role as arbiter in questions of justice.

Fears that the state’s authority was under threat were fed by a further development: left-wing activists were assuming the task of stopping and searching individuals for arms in public spaces across the country in spring 1936. As Región astutely observed, the searches meant that ‘the security and safety of each individual depends on the sympathy or antipathy held towards us by those of the “Popular Front”’.⁶² Yet the situation was not one of revolutionary violence or of widespread extra-judicial murder. It is impossible to measure the effects of these frequent, intimate encounters between left and right, but the removal of weapons by local political opponents could only have increased anger and resentment among rightists.

This improvised policing had begun in Asturias in January, when the government reinstated constitutional guarantees and left-wing political activities were normalized in public life. It became more prevalent across the country in late March after rumours that an order by the ministry of the interior authorized governors to appoint them to the role.⁶³ These ‘guardias de vista’ worked alongside municipal police to search rightists, as occurred in El Entrego (San Martín del Rey Aurelio), although there were also reports that such guards had been arrested by the Civil Guard for carrying firearms.⁶⁴ The emergence of the patrols was part of the wider growth of left-wing militias. By May, the antifascist militias of the Communist MAOC, which had only established itself after the elections, were carrying out drills on Mount Naranco, overlooking Oviedo.⁶⁵

Whereas in 1932 groups of JS members had pressured the municipal council for the Republican project to be implemented, the policing of the Republic in 1936 was different. The patrols confidently took the security of the Republic into their own hands. The groups moved between acting autonomously and requesting authorization to function as a para-state body. In early April, the PCE cell in Sama requested that the governor appoint them ‘guarantors of order’ so that they could prevent ‘false rumours’ or ‘any surprises’ from the armed forces. They also asked the mayor to ban rightists from leaving the municipality at ‘certain times’ to prevent alarm.⁶⁶ The militias saw themselves as upholding the values and authority of the Republican government – and their vision of the Republic more broadly – but in doing so, they undermined state power. At the beginning of April, there were attempts to curb the activities of the non-official police, including a circular issued by the ministry of the interior ordering an end to the initiatives across the country, although this had little effect.⁶⁷

The patrols derived from suspicions regarding right-wing activities and an intense distrust of the security forces bred by the repression. The memory of torture and beatings weighed heavily. The fixation with the security forces was not solely an Asturian phenomenon; newspapers like Madrid-based Ayuda, the newspaper of the SRI, also published long lists of the names of ‘hangmen’ from the repression.⁶⁸ Asturian newspapers printed not only testimonies of the repression and denunciations of officials for their roles, but also continued to report on the movements and transfers of civil and assault guards.⁶⁹ This was not Avance’s broad-brush 1934 narrative of a state ‘at war’ with the working class, but a much more personalized and intimate expression of a fissure between the state security forces and the left. Guards had names and faces rather than simply constituting the anonymous expression of state power.

Scrutiny of the security forces drew not only on the repression but also on concerns of collusion between the police and the right. The left had long been distrustful of the politics of the security forces, but in 1936, these fears became more acute. The Civil Guard in Aller were reported to be ‘cohabiting’ with the SCOM prior to the elections and the council investigated reports that a municipal employee had been training ‘fascist militias’ and disseminating propaganda ‘against the republican regime’.⁷⁰ Accusations of double standards fed this criticism, according to which the Civil and Assault Guard frisked or beat Popular Front supporters, but ignored those performing fascist salutes and shouting death to the Republic.⁷¹ The veracity of such claims in the polarized climate of 1936 is difficult to assess, but the wider European context, in which the police was more vigorous in clamping down on the left than the right, shows that it would not have been unusual.⁷²

The vigilance of state power was also an important component in the construction of an antifascist identity that connected Asturias with the circumstances facing left-wing activists across the world. Focusing on the plight of prisoners and alleging the arbitrary, excessive and politicized use of state power linked Asturias – and Spain – to the conditions under right-wing dictatorships in particular. A rally in Oviedo and a petition raised awareness and protested against the incarceration of Brazilian Communists, while the left-wing press, like the SRI’s Ayuda, regularly called attention to the plight of imprisoned leftists across the world.⁷³ Such cases functioned as a mirror in which Spanish leftists could recognize their own plight and integrate themselves into a wider imagined community of antifascist struggle.

The militancy in the streets was in stark contrast to the situation at the workplace. The mining industry continued to struggle with a low demand for coal, yet labour conflict was practically absent until late May. Even then, the wave of strikes was ‘channelled through institutional mechanisms’.⁷⁴ Short-time working and unpaid wages eventually led to a general mining strike called by the SOMA for 3 June.⁷⁵ The eighteen-day strike was remarkably peaceful, given the tense political situation. The SOMA presented a list of demands, most of which were unremarkable, such as the disbursement of unpaid wages and pensions. The final two, however, were more radical: the state seizure of mines abandoned or closed for unjustified reasons and the appointment of a commission to study the nationalization of the industry.⁷⁶ Yet the solution agreed to end the strike did not mention nationalization, but instead focused on pragmatic solutions to improve the workforce’s living standards.⁷⁷ Soliciting nationalization was a radical rhetorical façade that veiled a more pragmatic interior.

The rhetoric embraced by the SOMA leadership and the newly re-launched Avance during the strike was radical. Graciano Antuña, the SOMA secretary, told the rank and file it was impossible to achieve all of their strike objectives within a bourgeois regime and invoked the revolutionary insurrection, in what had become an obligatory gesture.⁷⁸ For Avance, a revolutionary horizon was beginning to clear; the masses were no longer ‘toys’, but rather ‘capable of guiding the tiller of the country on their own’.⁷⁹ But there was no real attempt to promote a revolutionary project behind the radical rhetoric. Instead, the words asserted a muscular role for the socialist rank and file in defending the Republic. In contrast to 1934, the left seemed to be reassuringly in control.

The relative calm in the Asturian mines was not reflected in other parts of Spain. Official statistics for Zaragoza reported seventy strikes during the first half of 1936, ‘as many … as had ever before been recorded in a single year’. This was due to a range of factors, including the resurgence of the CNT and a contraction in the sugar beet industry.⁸⁰ Unrest deepened in the south of the country in particular. Unemployment had grown thanks to the prolongation of the winter rain – ‘the heaviest of the century’ – which reduced the demand for labour, and strikes erupted once the harvest started.⁸¹ At the same time, there was a much more muscular assertion of power by rural workers that undermined rural bosses’ control of the labour process, such as unions dictating the length of the working day or deciding on the number of workers required for a task without regard for the employer’s own needs. Such moves struck ‘deeply at the autonomy of property owners’.⁸²

Parts of Andalusia, Madrid, Toledo, Salamanca and Extremadura also saw land invasions, in which peasants entered and occupied land. Only in Extremadura did these take place on a mass scale: 81,000 yunteros occupied 270,000 hectares in late March.⁸³ The yunteros were hired hands with a head of oxen and, although a heterogeneous group, they tended to be peasants who had fallen on hard times. During the Republic, yunteros had invaded estates in 1932 and 1933 and 1,400 were settled in 1934 thanks to the 1932 agrarian reform law. But many were later evicted and sought to return to the land in 1936. The government began to circulate proposals in March to settle thousands of rural labourers and the FNTT, which experienced an influx of new members, stepped up its rhetoric. The promise of land reform precipitated the invasions of estates, which the government was powerless to stop.⁸⁴ Faced with the mass wave of direct action, the authorities legalized the occupations, with the result that many more peasants obtained land in 1936 than after the 1932 agrarian reform law. Over the following months, the government worked hard to reorganize the Land Reform Institute and prepare a bill for a more vigorous, wide-ranging land reform than the toothless ‘reform of the land reform’ of 1935. But, in the eyes of those opposed to the Popular Front, retroactive legalization only confirmed a vision of a lawless rural society which the government was unable and unwilling to resist.

The layers of the Republican state – municipal, provincial and national – thus faced a number of challenges in spring 1936. The resolution of these problems was not aided by the instability of the parliament, despite the Popular Front majority in the Cortes. The parliament did not meet until mid March and investigations into electoral fraud meant the make-up of the Cortes was not agreed until April (and elections were rerun in Cuenca and Granada in early May). Almost as soon as the Cortes sessions began, President Alcalá Zamora was impeached on a procedural technicality. On 10 May, Manuel Azaña replaced him as president of the Republic. The elevation of the icon of left Republicanism to presidential office removed an able politician from the nitty gritty of everyday governmental politics. Azaña had hoped that Prieto would follow him as prime minister, but Prieto was hamstrung by his own party. The socialist left refused to countenance a revival of a Republican-socialist coalition government as the socialist internal struggle between the Caballeristas and Prietistas continued.⁸⁵ Instead, the premiership fell to the Galician IR politician, Santiago Casares Quiroga, who formed a Republican administration. Due to obstructions in parliament, the government tended to rule through decrees that were later transformed into laws and continued to extend the state of alarm until the Civil War.⁸⁶

The weak government and the challenges facing the country led to some brief negotiations aimed at forming a national unity government, although the talks and the plan were doomed to fail. CEDA moderates Luis Lucía and Manuel Giménez Fernández entered discussions with socialists to form an administration to stabilize social conflict.⁸⁷ Talks had little chance of success even before they began. The socialist movement was divided and there was no sign of support from the wider CEDA, in which anti-Republican sentiment was fiercer than ever. Gil Robles, who had not taken the negotiations seriously, terminated them on 2 June.⁸⁸

Rather than seeking solutions to the problems facing the Republic, Gil Robles was more interested in attacking the regime. Together with Renovación Española leader José Calvo Sotelo, he used the platform afforded by the Cortes to accuse the government of promoting chaos and disorder across the country. In his speeches to parliament, Calvo Sotelo combined denunciations of violence, strikes and alleged chaos across the country to criticize the left and the impotency of the government. He announced that if a state without strikes and disorder was a ‘fascist state’, he ‘share[d] the idea of that [kind of ] state, I believe in it [and] I declare myself a fascist’.⁸⁹ An editorial in Región at the end of May expressed a similar sentiment: the alleged crisis of authority was more pressing than upholding the tenets of democratic rule. Other countries had shown that a move away from democracy was ‘not a catastrophe’.⁹⁰

Both Gil Robles and Calvo Sotelo were cognizant of plans to destroy Republican democracy. By spring 1936 there were multiple conspiracies against the regime, which eventually coalesced around the project designed by General Emilio Mola, who was stationed in the Carlist heartland of Navarra (although Mola struggled to sign up the Carlists to his project). In late May, Mola, the ‘director’, began dictating the instructions which would provide the foundation for the July rebellion. Through June and July, Gil Robles instructed CEDA cadres to support the coup when it occurred and transferred CEDA funds to the conspirators.⁹¹ Gil Robles’s actions were largely symbolic, for the CEDA’s star had been eclipsed. In the wake of the elections, its youth organization, the JAP, had all but collapsed as many members switched to the FE-JONS – as many as 15,000 overall, including half of the membership of the JAP in Gijón.⁹² The growth in membership and activity of the FE-JONS came despite the jailing of its leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, and the party having to operate underground, as the Republican authorities grappled with its anti-left and anti-Republican agitation, particularly the problem of violence.

Violence

Late on 14 March, Manuel José G. Q. sat drinking cider in a bar called ‘La Polesa’ in Sama. Three individuals entered the bar and started an argument with him about politics, accusing Manuel José of being a plain-clothes civil guard and a fascist. When he pulled out his work permit and military papers as evidence of proletarian identity, they claimed them to be false and threw them on the floor. A brawl ensued. Manuel José drew a knife and stabbed his three assailants, one of whom died instantly from a wound to the heart.⁹³ Two days previously and in very different circumstances, the leading socialist jurist Luis Jiménez de Asúa was fired upon as he left his home on Goya Street in Madrid. Jiménez de Asúa, who had presided over the commission which had drafted the 1931 Constitution, survived, but his bodyguard died from his injuries.⁹⁴

These two incidents capture some of the principal characteristics of violence in spring 1936. Both were brief, small-scale encounters resulting in one fatality.⁹⁵ Manuel José’s reaction was founded on defending his honour as a working-class male. Policing a particular space was also central to the incident in La Polesa. Manuel José’s opponents aggressively policed the local tavern as their social space: what right did a plain-clothes civil guard have to be in a working-class bar in Sama in March 1936? The violent policing of working-class spaces was also evident in other targeted attacks at the level of local politics or the community, from two brothers killing a teacher for denouncing them after the insurrection to cars being stopped and fired at in Moreda and Laviana, the former belonging to the parish priest.⁹⁶ These attacks were often part of a of tit-for-tat chain of escalating encounters between left and right at the local level.

The murder of Jiménez de Asúa was the result of FE-JONS switching to a new a strategy of targeted assassinations, the aim of which was to incite a climate of violence and chaos. The strategy of targeted killings was also employed in Asturias. In Asturias, unidentified assailants killed Alfredo Martínez, ex-minister and PRLD leader, at his home, and there was an attempt on the life of the civil governor in May.⁹⁷ In Sotrondio, an individual reported that six men had threatened to kill him for political reasons and in Siero hired hit men attempted to murder a teacher who led the Socialist Group.⁹⁸ The motives included revenge and intimidation. The two were linked: while murders could be an attempt to frighten opponents into submission, the far right also intended to spark an escalating dynamic of attack and counter-attack in order to spread a sense of chaos and undermine Republican authority.⁹⁹ The rightist press amplified these incidents by grouping them together on newspaper pages.

The spectacle of political violence in public space did not disappear. Violence clustered around demonstrations as opponents attempted to disrupt collective expressions of strength or project an image of disorder on a public stage. In early April, an impromptu celebratory march in Oviedo to welcome the return of those exiled in the USSR after the insurrection led to a brawl when a passer-by shouted ‘arriba España!’ The Assault Guard beat several of the marchers and a fascist was arrested.¹⁰⁰ On the anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic, a similar scene occurred in Ourense while in Madrid a civil guard in civilian clothes and a student were killed when shots and small explosions interrupted the military procession. The funeral for the civil guard turned into a right-wing anti-Republican demonstration, at which five died and 170 were arrested.¹⁰¹

Iconoclastic and anticlerical violence also returned across Spain. The attacks included arson attacks on churches and shrines and the destruction of stone crosses in public spaces. A recent calculation estimates there were thirty-five such attacks in Asturias in spring 1936.¹⁰² In a return to the early years of the Republic – and in contrast to October 1934 – the targets were overwhelmingly buildings and objects as opposed to the bodies of priests or religious brothers. The attacks tended not to occur in large urban centres in the coalfields, but in more remote and rural areas, where the political right and Catholic observance were stronger, and grouped in waves such as around Holy Week.¹⁰³ This renewed anticlericalism did not prevent the public celebration of Corpus Christi. The election results had revealed the village of Boo to be polarized politically, yet the Corpus procession took place in the streets without a problem.¹⁰⁴

Despite a dominant image of state helplessness and left-wing proto-revolutionary violence, the state security forces caused most fatalities as the authorities attempted to respond to left-and right-wing militancy.¹⁰⁵ The state also used arrests in order to curb violence and reassert its authority. The attempted assassination of Jiménez de Asúa in March shocked the country and prompted a crackdown on FE-JONS, which was forced to operate underground. FE-JONS leaders were arrested across the country. Primo de Rivera was detained two days after the attack, and tried and re-arrested on different charges in March and April.¹⁰⁶ Thirty-seven were jailed in the first wave of arrests in Asturias. Further waves of arrests of rightists – Falangists and CEDA members – and fines followed in April and May.¹⁰⁷

Supporters of FE-JONS challenged the arrests, which created a further problem for the authorities. The right, including Región, bemoaned the alleged chaos and lack of authority even as the state asserted its power by arresting right-wing leaders. The detentions only confirmed the narrative that the right was being persecuted by a state controlled by the left. Deserted by state power, citizens now had to assume the ‘terrible’ responsibility to take ‘justice into their own hands’.¹⁰⁸ When arrests were made in Aller, which was developing into a centre of the radical right, sympathizers came out to support them en masse, performing the fascist salute and crying ‘viva Catholic Spain!’. Región revelled in the defiance shown towards the Republican authorities:

Arrests legitimized their anti-Republican position. In Aller, conflict over religion was an exacerbating factor in the arrest of right-wing leaders. The protests were energized by heightened tensions locally over the removal of religious education, which had long been a vexing and divisive issue in the municipality.¹¹⁰

Left-wing activists did not conceal their antipathy towards the security forces, but in contrast, aligned themselves with the Republic – or a particular idea of the Republic. The socialists strongly identified with Bosque, the IR civil governor, for he embodied the more assertive and uncompromising left-oriented view of the Republic that matched their own.¹¹¹ They exhibited willingness to police their towns and villages as they considered the Republic increasingly incapable of defending itself. The militant attitude was aligned with the Republican project as the regime was still identified as supporting their interests. The Communist newspaper Mundo Obrero declared in mid June that the government could ‘rely on the militias for whatever it takes to maintain and develop the policies undertaken under the banner of the Popular Front’.¹¹² They saw their own militias policing the streets as unproblematic insofar as they were working to uphold the Republic.

An incident in late May underlined leftist distrust of the security forces and the difficulties faced by the civil governor. On the evening of 23 May, shots were fired in the midst of a crowd enjoying a two-night open-air public party in central Oviedo. JS and JC members disarmed the individual responsible. Plain-clothes assault guards intervened, but were also disarmed, beaten and insulted by the youths, who handed the weapons to the authorities. The following evening, the Assault Guard attempted to heal its wounded pride by reasserting its authority. A ‘tall, young, blond individual’ fired into the air ‘as though it were a signal’, and assault guards fired into the crowd. The lights went out and panic ensued. The governor, who had forbidden the presence of the Assault Guard after the previous evening, ordered the guards return to their barracks. They disobeyed. Two trucks of guards attended the scene and opened fire. The mayor, public prosecutor and other political leaders rushed to the scene and managed to diffuse the incident. More than 100 shots had been fired, leaving twenty-one injured. La Tarde claimed that the attack had been orchestrated.¹¹³

The Assault Guard’s aggressive reaction to being disarmed by citizens supports arguments that emphasize the importance of honour in how the security forces understood their collective identity and policing role.¹¹⁴ It is not clear if the attack was premeditated, but it is difficult to imagine it was not connected to the brawl the previous evening. A signal from a youth with a Teutonic appearance verges on the cliché, but does match the model of a Falangist strategy of tension in which there were attempts to spark an escalating spiral of violence and in so doing, spread a sense of chaos. Región was unusually subdued in its depiction of the incident and minimized the importance of the injuries.¹¹⁵ This contrasted starkly with its habitual amplification of conflict and violence.

The reaction of the left to the incident was an exhibition of collective power and a willingness to take responsibility for policing the local population. The morning after the incident, the unions shut down Oviedo with a general strike, which continued until midday the following day. Using a general strike to close down a locality as a gesture of protest and to demonstrate peaceful left-wing control had occurred on previous occasions, as in Sama in September 1934. But this time it affected the provincial capital, and left-wing authority was more organized and assertive. Rather than simply closing shops and factories or providing an escort for a funeral procession, activists’ roles extended further. Circulation was controlled through safe-conducts, a ‘red guard’ kept order and traffic access into the city was restricted. Even the national cycle race, the Vuelta a España, was turned away from the city.¹¹⁶ Región accused the left of holding the city to ransom in a much more vocal criticism of the strike than of the Assault Guard violence which had precipitated it.¹¹⁷

The incident was not the only occasion in which the security forces were absent as the left controlled the streets. López Mulero, the socialist mayor of Oviedo, requested that the security forces not be present at a Popular Front rally in March. The civil governor agreed.¹¹⁸ The 1 May celebrations took place in similar circumstances and La Tarde proudly highlighted the lack of ‘a single incident ... which demonstrates that we do not need foreign bodies to maintain order’.¹¹⁹ Such sentiments recalled declarations prior to the revolutionary insurrection, but much more sharply defined than in 1934 was the contrast between the security force’s policing methods and the order, discipline and serenity that were the watchwords of leftist militancy and antifascist identity in 1936. In his speech on 1 May, Mulero eulogized the ‘discipline’ of the ‘red militias’ and their massed ranks as ‘the firmest bulwark of the security of the Republic’. They were not simply political activists but a disciplined ‘proletarian Army’, and the crowd’s applause allegedly even sounded like a ‘machine gun’.¹²⁰ At least this was the idealized image that socialist ranks had of themselves as antifascist militants.

The rallies, strikes and demonstrations in spring 1936 were an exhibition of left-wing strength. Organizations had recovered after operating underground during the long 1935. There had been a rapid growth in Socialist Youth, the reorganization of women’s groups and an intensification of political activities involving men and women. Julia Morán, who had criticized the political and social pressures in Laviana in 1934, declared her satisfaction at returning to the struggle after ‘seventeen months of forced silence’. She felt ‘more revolutionary’ and ready to prepare for the ‘definitive battle’.¹²¹ In contrast to other areas of Spain, where the Popular Front ‘never extended beyond the election committee’, in Asturias it became a ‘vehicle for working-class demands and action’ thanks to local traditions of organization and political activity, although these activities were not always sustained and there were complaints that not all members were engaged.¹²² For Avance, Popular Front committees were ‘organisms of combat then and should continue to be so now’.¹²³ Unity again became an important watchword. By mid July, the Popular Front and re-launched Workers’ Alliances appear to have combined into an entangled and indistinguishable whole, with an increasing prominence accorded to the language of antifascism and the need for unity of action to forestall an attack from the right.¹²⁴

In other areas of Spain, the left flexed its muscles in the spring of 1936, from unions pushing closed-shop practices to municipal councils introducing new taxes on the Church or wresting back control of hiring processes.¹²⁵ This assertion of left-wing power meant a destabilization of the traditional social order and economic practices, which was experienced as an encroachment and a threat by certain groups. In areas like Jaén, smallholding peasants who periodically relied on wage labourers turned to the radical right to defend their interests. In the Asturian coalfields, the situation was different. Rather than the left encroaching on terrain traditionally the preserve of local elites, such as management of the labour process, there was a recovery and reassertion of left-wing power at the local level. A greater sense of change was palpable in Oviedo, which had its first socialist mayor, and where left-wing demonstrations were more common than in previous years. For rightist inhabitants of Oviedo, the sound of dynamite to signal the 1 May parade can only have revived memories of October 1934 and stoked fears of a revolutionary threat.

Some prefer to see this encroachment, whether the growth in left-wing organizations or the more radical assertion of power by new municipal authorities, as a ‘revolution’ or ‘dictatorship’ from below.¹²⁶ There was an assertive, radical left attempting to shift the dynamics of power at the local level, but no clear revolutionary project. Largo Caballero had returned to his revolutionary posturing, but there was no revolutionary plan to back his rhetoric. For the socialist left, the ‘erosion’ the government was suffering was a problem for the Republican parties rather than affecting the Popular Front or indeed the Republic itself.¹²⁷ Nor was the PCE conspiring to bring down the Republic, for the Comintern policy of Popular Frontism required the Communists support Republican democracy. The CNT, which did not form part of the Popular Front, repudiated the insurrectionary path at its congress in Zaragoza in May.

Different visions of the Republic continued to compete in 1936, as they had done since the beginning of the Republic. In 1936, the Republic demanded on the streets of Asturias – and more widely – was an uncompromisingly militant social Republic, the Popular Front’s prize for having won the elections. In some ways, the militancy was similar to the socialist rhetoric prior to the 1933 elections, but rather than focusing on the socialists gaining power, the rhetoric in 1936 was a broader principle of a leftist, worker-led Republic, which would impose itself on those who would not accept reform. This vision of the Republic would provide a foundation for the antifascist reconstruction of the Republican ideal during the Civil War.

There was a new wave of violence in Asturias at the end of June and rumours spread of a possible uprising. A bombing campaign by the far right targeted the Asturian leftist publications La Tarde and Combate, a Communist newspaper kiosk, the PCE headquarters in Oviedo, and the town hall and a bank in Sama.¹²⁸ Patrols by left-wing militants increased at the end of June as rumours spread of a possible uprising, and there were reports of right-wing ‘subversive elements’ sleeping at the Civil Guard post in Aller.¹²⁹ Socialists in Siero reported suspicious movements to the Civil Guard who then searched the homes of ‘fascists’.¹³⁰

The socialist press swung between frustration and bullishness. Avance was exasperated that the state refused to protect left-wing activists who were the first line of defence for the Republic. Not only were individuals ‘at the service’ of the Republic on trial for seizing weapons from their opponents and handing them to the authorities, but they also received longer prison sentences than the owners of the firearms.¹³¹ At the same time, self-assured militias in Sama claimed to be disappointed when a rumoured uprising did not materialize.¹³² Avance piled pressure on rank-and-file militants. The security of the Republic was a personal responsibility; they had to be vigilant and embody the necessary militant attitude at all times:

Yet beneath this radical, bellicose posturing, internal purges and boycotts continued as the left continued to attempt to police its own internal ranks and reaffirm its hegemony over the local community.¹³⁴ The radicalism was fragile and defensive.

For Avance, the situation was ‘like in 1933, but worse’. No longer were the forces of ‘reaction’ content with gaining control of the Republic, they were now intent on destroying it.¹³⁵ Yet there was no suggestion of a creeping, conspiratorial threat of fascism installing itself from government, as in 1934. The fascist threat was in the street. Avance demanded that the authorities deal with fascist ‘pistolerismo’ or else the ‘working class’ would.¹³⁶ In fact, it would be an escalating case of pistolerismo in Madrid that hastened the coming of war. On the evening of 12 July, José Castillo, a socialist Assault Guard lieutenant, was shot dead by rightist gunmen.¹³⁷ Hours later assault guards retaliated by murdering Renovación Española leader Calvo Sotelo. His death convinced the conspirators to bring forward the planned coup.¹³⁸

On Friday 17 July, news filtered through to the peninsula of an uprising in the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco. The following day crowds gathered in the streets of Madrid outside union buildings and cafes to share news, rumours and to listen to the radio.¹³⁹ In Asturias, most of Avance’s front page was blanked out by order of the censor, leaving only a snippet of a report on workers’ patrols and a cartoon showing muscular workers of the Workers’ Alliance standing in the way of a train whistling monarchist conspiracies that was driven by Azaña.¹⁴⁰ The civil governor, political leaders and union officials gathered in the civil government building in central Oviedo to monitor developments. They were joined by the military commander of the province, Colonel Aranda, who enjoyed the confidence of both Republican loyalists and the rebels. Aranda readily agreed to a request from Indalecio Prieto, socialist leader and a personal friend, to send a column of mineworkers to defend Madrid. Three thousand volunteers departed Asturias for the capital that same 18 July. The following day, a Sunday, the streets of Oviedo were quiet and cafes deserted. Having conveniently reduced the threat posed by left-wing activists, Aranda slowly concentrated the province’s security forces in the capital. That evening, as a light drizzle started to fall, Aranda intercepted an order sent from Madrid for his own arrest and finally made his move by declaring himself for the rebellion.¹⁴¹

______________

¹ La Tarde, 2 March 1936; El Noroeste, 3 March 1936.

² For the jubilation and ‘apotheosis’, see J. Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–38 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. xii, 10. For more on levels of violence, see B. Jenkins and C. Millington, France and Fascism: February 1934 and the Dynamics of Political Crisis (Abingdon, 2015), p. 151.

³ S. Payne, ‘Political violence during the Spanish Second Republic’, Journal of Contemporary History, xxv (1990), 269–88, at p. 279. For a summary of the historiography, see E. González Calleja, ‘La historiografía sobre la violencia política en la Segunda República española’, Hispania Nova: revista de historia contemporánea, xi (2013) 403–36.

⁴ G. Ranzato, ‘El peso de la violencia en los orígenes de la guerra civil de 1936–1939’, Espacio, tiempo y forma, serie v, Historia contemporánea, xx (2008), 159–82; S. Payne, The Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 1933 – 1936: the Origins of the Civil War (New Haven, Conn., 2006), pp. 197–215.

⁵ E. González Calleja, En nombre de la autoridad: la defensa del orden público durante la Segunda República española (1931–1936) (Granada, 2014), pp. 259–60.

⁶ E. González Calleja, ‘La necro-lógica de la violencia sociopolítica en la primavera de 1936’, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, xli (2011) <http://journals.openedition.org/mcv/3825> [accessed 13 Jan. 2019].

⁷ See S. Juliá, Orígenes del frente popular en España (Madrid, 1979), pp. 216–21; H. Graham, Socialism and War: the Spanish Socialist Party in Power and Crisis, 1936–1939 (Cambridge, 1991), ch. 1.

⁸ P. Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform, Reaction and Revolution in the Second Republic (London, 1978), p. 169; J. R. Montero, La CEDA: el catolicismo social y político en la II República, (2 vols, Madrid, 1977), ii. 312.

⁹ Preston, Coming of the Spanish Civil War, pp. 171–4. See also Montero, CEDA, ii. 317–8.

¹⁰ Región, 4, 16 Feb. 1936.

¹¹ El Noroeste, 16 Feb. 1936. See also Montero, CEDA, ii. 322–6; R. Cruz, En el nombre del pueblo: república, rebelión y guerra en la España de 1936 (Madrid, 2006), p. 93. For a similar discourse in Andalusia, see J. M. Macarro Vera, Socialismo, República y revolución en Andalucía (1931–1936) (Seville, 2000), pp. 397–8.

¹² Cruz, En el nombre, p. 97.

¹³ Región, 7 Jan., 8 Feb. 1936. For conflicts over posters see also Cruz, En el nombre, p. 97. Álvarez Tardío noted the relative lack of lethal violence in areas with previously high levels of social conflict, e.g. Barcelona (M. Álvarez Tardío, ‘The impact of political violence during the Spanish general election of 1936’, Journal of Contemporary History, xlviii (2013), 463–85, at p. 475).

¹⁴ Región, 13 Feb. 1936.

¹⁵ E.g. C. Ealham, Class, Culture and Conflict in Barcelona, 1898–1937 (Abingdon, 2005), p. 148; G. Álvarez Chillida, ‘ Negras tormentas sobre la República. La intransigencia libertaria’, in Palabras como puños: la intransigencia política en la Segunda República, ed. F. del Rey (Madrid, 2011), pp. 103–4.

¹⁶ On the elections, see the classic study J. Tusell, Las elecciones del Frente Popular (Madrid, 1971).

¹⁷ Preston, Coming of the Spanish Civil War, pp. 179–80; E. González Calleja, Contrarrevolucionarios: radicalización violenta de las derechas durante la Segunda República, 1931–1936 (Madrid, 2011), pp. 302–3.

¹⁸ S. Lowe, Catholicism, War and the Foundation of Francoism (Eastbourne, 2010), pp. 109–11.

¹⁹ M. Vincent, Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic: Religion and Politics in Salamanca, 1930–1936 (Oxford, 1996), p. 239. For similar remarks on Galicia, see E. Grandío Seoane, Los orígenes de la derecha gallega: la CEDA en Galicia (1931–1936) (Sada, 1998), pp. 277–9, 286ff.

²⁰ Boletín oficial de la provincia de Oviedo, 27 Feb. 1936.

²¹ For results, see La Tarde, 17 Feb. 1936; Región, 18 Feb. 1936. It could be argued that voters for the CEDA-PRLD were in fact voting for the PRLD without sharing the values of the CEDA. However, voters still had to stomach the rhetoric of the CEDA and a breakdown of voting in Aller indicates that voters did not favour PRLD candidates over the CEDA on their ballot papers (Boletín oficial de la provincia de Oviedo, 29 Feb., 2, 5 March 1936).

²² La Voz de Asturias, 22 Feb. 1936.

²³ M. Suárez Cortina, El fascismo en Asturias (Gijón, 1981), pp. 281–2.

²⁴ La Tarde, 24, 28 Feb. 1936.

²⁵ See Grandío Seoane, Orígenes, p. 281; Macarro Vera, Socialismo, pp. 402–3.

²⁶ D. Ibárruri, Memorias de Dolores Ibárruri, Pasionaria: la lucha y la vida (Barcelona, 1985), pp. 227–33. See also Cruz, En el nombre, p. 109.

²⁷ La Voz de Asturias, 22 Feb. 1936.

²⁸ Región, 22 Feb. 1936; El Noroeste, 23 Feb. 1936.

²⁹ El Noroeste, 23 Feb. 1936; La Tarde, 28 Feb. 1936.

³⁰ M. Castejón Rodríguez, ‘La patronal hullera asturiana en la Segunda República’ (unpublished UNED PhD thesis, 2009), p. 430; El Noroeste, 26, 28 Feb. 1936; Boletín oficial de la provincia de Oviedo, 26 Feb. 1936.

³¹ AO, Actas, 17 Jan. 1936 to 31 July 1937, ff. 20, 21; AA, Actas, 5 Dec. 1935 to 23 Apr. 1937, ff. 43–4, 67; AHPA, Actas, 24 Sept. 1935 to 20 May 1937, pp. 180–4. See also González Calleja, En nombre, pp. 263–4; Macarro Vera, Socialismo, pp. 409–10.

³² AHPA, Actas comisión de la Diputación Provincial, 24 Sept. 1935 to 20 May 1937, pp. 269, 294–7, 349–50; F. Rey, Paisanos en lucha: exclusión política y violencia en la Segunda República española (Madrid, 2008), pp. 512–3; G. Collier, Socialists of Rural Andalusia: Unacknowledged Revolutionaries of the Second Republic (Stanford, Calif., 1987), p. 143.

³³ R. García Montes, Ángeles rojos sin alas para volar (Siero, 2009), p. 33.

³⁴ La Tarde, 4 May 1936.

³⁵ For October 1934 as a yardstick during the Civil War, see Graham, Socialism, pp. 19ff.

³⁶ Actas de la reunión extraordinaria celebrada por la Célula de Barrio no. 1, de Sama para tratar el caso de las críticas al camarada Damián, CDMH, PS Gijón, H Series, box 15, file 16. T. Rees underlined the importance of ‘willpower’ in the PCE in ‘Living up to Lenin: leadership culture and the Spanish Communist Party, 1920–1939’, History, xcvii (2012), 230– 55, at p. 252.

³⁷ See T. Rees, ‘Deviation and discipline: anti-Trotskyism, Bolshevization and the Spanish Communist party, 1924–34’, Historical Research, lxxxii (2009), 131–56.

³⁸ E.g. La Tarde, 26 Feb., 23 March 1936.

³⁹ La Tarde, 22 Apr., 13 May 1936. For biographies, see the ‘Diccionario biográfico del socialismo español’.

⁴⁰ E.g. at the Mariana pit (Región, 25 March 1936).

⁴¹ S. Juliá, La izquierda del PSOE (1935–1936) (Madrid, 1977), pp. 176–81.

⁴² The classic study is R. Viñas, La formación de las Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (1934– 1936) (Madrid, 1978).

⁴³ For reports of the congress, see La Tarde, 24, 27 Apr., 4 May 1936.

⁴⁴ For La Moral, see La Tarde, 11 May 1936; for Siero, see Avance, 18 July 1936.

⁴⁵ La Tarde, 3 Feb. 1936.

⁴⁶ Avance, 18 July 1936.

⁴⁷ La Tarde, 4 March 1936. Accusations were often published, e.g., La Tarde, 9 March 1936.

⁴⁸ La Tarde, 3 Feb., 6 May 1936.

⁴⁹ La Tarde, 27 March 1936.

⁵⁰ P. Swett, Neighbors and Enemies: the Culture of Radicalism in Berlin, 1929–1933 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 216, 221, 294.

⁵¹ Particularly after the 1933 elections (Avance, 7 Dec. 1933, 16 Jan. 1934). For Gijón in 1931, see P. Radcliff, From Mobilization to Civil War: the Politics of Polarization in the Spanish City of Gijón, 1900–1937 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 285.

⁵² El Noroeste, 21 Feb. 1936; La Tarde, 23 March 1936.

⁵³ La Tarde, 18 March 1936.

⁵⁴ La Tarde, 8 Apr. 1936. For a similar case in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz), see J. A. Viejo Fernández, La Segunda República en Sanlúcar de Barrameda (1931–36) (Sanlúcar de Barrameda, 2011), p. 316. For right-wing boycotts, see also La Tarde, 23 March 1936.

⁵⁵ La Tarde, 2 March 1936.

⁵⁶ For example, three cases in San Martín del Rey Aurelio (La Tarde, 15 May 1936).

⁵⁷ La Tarde, 16 March 1936. See also Avance, 7 July 1936; J. Uría, ‘Asturias 1920–1937, el espacio cultural comunista y la cultura de la izquierda: historia de un diálogo entre dos décadas’, in Los comunistas en Asturias (1920–1982), ed. F. Erice (Gijón, 1996), p. 275.

⁵⁸ Avance, 7 July 1936.

⁵⁹ E.g. see the case of Figaredo in La Tarde, 11 May 1936.

⁶⁰ La Tarde, 16 March 1936.

⁶¹ La Tarde, 2 March 1936.

⁶² Región, 30 Apr. 1936.

⁶³ The ‘red police’ in Malaga even received a daily wage. González Calleja, En nombre, p. 280. For restrictions on the right in La Mancha, Rey, Paisanos, pp. 522–31.

⁶⁴ Región, 1, 4 Apr. 1936.

⁶⁵ La Tarde, 6 May 1936; J. A. Blasco Rodríguez, ‘Las MAOC y la tesis insurreccional del PCE’, Historia contemporánea, xi (1994), 129–51, at pp. 140–2, 145; J. C. Gibaja Velázquez, ‘La tradición improvisada: el socialismo y la milicia’, Historia contemporánea, xi (1994), 107– 27, at p. 123.

⁶⁶ Letter to Comarcal de Langreo from Célula de Calle de Sama, 3 Apr. 1936, CDMH, PS Gijón, H Series, box 15, file 18; letter from Frente Popular de Langreo to Comarcal de Langreo, 2 June 1936, CDMH, PS Gijón, H Series, box 15, file 18.

⁶⁷ González Calleja, En nombre, pp. 284–5.

⁶⁸ Ayuda, 18 May 1936.

⁶⁹ E.g. La Tarde, 8 Apr. 1936.

⁷⁰ La Tarde, 7 Feb. 1936; AA, Actas, 5 Dec. 1935 to 23 Apr. 1937, f. 58.

⁷¹ La Tarde, 27 March, 4 May 1936.

⁷² E.g. for Germany, see D. Schumann, Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918– 1933: Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War (New York, 2012), p. 252.

⁷³ La Tarde, 29 May 1936; Avance, 2 July 1936; e.g., Ayuda, 1 June 1936

⁷⁴ Castejón Rodríguez, ‘La patronal’, p. 433.

⁷⁵ El Carbayón, 4 June 1936; Castejón Rodríguez, ‘La patronal’, p. 436.

⁷⁶ La Tarde, 1 June 1936.

⁷⁷ Castejón Rodríguez, ‘La patronal’, p. 436. Details of the solution in Avance, 27 June 1936.

⁷⁸ La Tarde, 22 June 1936.

⁷⁹ Avance, 2 July 1936.

⁸⁰ G. Kelsey, Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State: the CNT in Zaragoza and Aragon, 1930–37 (Amsterdam, 1991), pp. 136–7.

⁸¹ E. Malefakis in Agrarian Reform and Peasant Revolution in Spain: Origins of the Spanish Civil War (New Haven, Conn., 1970), p. 367; F. Cobo Romero, De campesinos a electores: modernización agraria en Andalucía, politización campesina y derechización de los pequeños propietarios y arrendatarios: el caso de la provincia de Jaén, 1931–1936 (Madrid, 2003), pp. 322, 324.

⁸² Cobo Romero, De campesinos, p. 321; F. Espinosa Maestre, La primavera del Frente Popular: los campesinos de Badajoz y el orígen de la Guerra Civil (marzo–julio de 1936) (Barcelona, 2007), p. 112; Collier, Socialists, pp. 140–1, the quotation at p. 141.

⁸³ J. Carmona and J. Simpson, ‘Campesinos unidos o divididos? La acción colectiva y la revolución social de los yunteros durante la Segunda República en España (1931–1936)’, Historia Social, lxxxv (2016), 123–44, at p. 130.

⁸⁴ This account is based on S. Riesco Roche, La reforma agraria y los orígenes de la Guerra Civil: cuestión yuntera y radicalización patronal en la provincia de Cáceres (1931–1940) (Madrid, 2006); Espinosa, La primavera; Malefakis, Agrarian reform, pp. 36–71.

⁸⁵ For socialist politics, see Graham, Socialism, ch. 2. For an overview of Republican politics, see Preston, Coming of the Spanish Civil War, pp. 183–5.

⁸⁶ M. Bizcarrondo, Historia de la UGT, iii: Entre la democracia y la revolución, 1931–1936 (6 vols, Madrid, 2008), pp. 186–7; González Calleja, Contrarrevolucionarios, p. 243.

⁸⁷ Montero, La CEDA, ii. 178–201, 206–7.

⁸⁸ J. Tusell, Historia de la democracia cristiana en España (2 vols, Madrid, 1974), i. 358.

⁸⁹ González Calleja, Contrarrevolucionarios, p. 334.

⁹⁰ Región, 28 May 1936.

⁹¹ González Calleja, Contrarrevolucionarios, pp. 340–88.

⁹² González Calleja, Contrarrevolucionarios, p. 358; Suárez Cortina, El fascismo, p. 187.

⁹³ AHPA, AP, box 78441, file 62 (1936).

⁹⁴ Details taken from El Sol, 13 March 1936.

⁹⁵ In 77% of incidents of political violence involving fatalities only one person died (González Calleja, ‘La necro-lógica’).

⁹⁶ L. Borque López, El magisterio primario en Asturias (1923 – 1937): sociedad y educación (Oviedo, 1991), pp. 210–11; Región, 1, 23 May 1936. For similar ‘ambushes’ towards the end of the Weimar Republic, see Schumann, Political Violence, pp. 253–64.

⁹⁷ Región, 24 March 1936; La Tarde, 27 March, 4 May 1936.

⁹⁸ Región, 29 Feb. 1936; Avance, 4 July 1936. Preston noted the hiring of hit men in Coming of the Spanish Civil War, p. 187.

⁹⁹ For this dynamic in action in the Aragonese town of Calatayud, see N. Moreno Medina, La ciudad silenciada: Segunda República y represión fascista en Calatayud, 1931–1939 (Calatayud, 2008), pp. 84–6.

¹⁰⁰ La Tarde, 3 Apr. 1936.

¹⁰¹ J. Prada Rodríguez, De la agitación republicana a la represión franquista (Ourense 1934– 1939) (Barcelona, 2006), p. 91; Cruz, En el nombre, pp. 134–7; A. Barea’s recollections in The Forging of a Rebel (London, 2018 [1946]), pp. 474–6.

¹⁰² M. Álvarez Tardío and R. Villa García, ‘El impacto de la violencia anticlerical en la primavera de 1936 y la respuesta de las autoridades’, Hispania sacra, lxv (2013), 693–764, at p. 705. See also M. Thomas, The Faith and the Fury: Popular Anticlerical Violence and Iconoclasm in Spain, 1931–1936 (Eastbourne, 2013), pp. 69–70, 72.

¹⁰³ Álvarez Tardío and Villa García, ‘El impacto’, pp. 750–2. See Región for Valdecuna and Villoria (Región, 17 March, 11 Apr., 20 May 1936). See also AHPA, AP, box 79465, files 9, 96, 133 (1936).

¹⁰⁴ Región, 2 July 1936.

¹⁰⁵ As shown by Cruz and González Calleja. See the latter’s ‘La necro-lógica’ and Cruz, En el nombre, p. 179.

¹⁰⁶ S. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977 (Madison, Wis., 1999), pp. 190–3.

¹⁰⁷ Region, 15 March, 21, 24 Apr. 1936; J. M. García de Tuñón Aza, Apuntes para una historia de la Falange asturiana (Oviedo, 2001), p. 85; La Tarde, 11 May 1936.

¹⁰⁸ Región, 24 March 1936.

¹⁰⁹ Región, 6 May 1936; La Tarde, 6 Apr. 1936.

¹¹⁰ Región, 12, 15, 17, 21 March 1936.

¹¹¹ When Bosque was forced to resign, telegrams of support and protest were sent by political parties, trade unions and municipal councils, and a strike was called in Mieres (Avance, 7 July 1936).

¹¹² Cited in Blasco Rodríguez, ‘Las MAOC’, p. 138.

¹¹³ La Tarde, 27 May 1936; Región, 27 May 1936.

¹¹⁴ F. Chamberlin, ‘Honor-bound: the military culture of the Civil Guard and the political violence of the Spanish Second Republic, 1931–1936’ (unpublished UCSD PhD thesis, 2017).

¹¹⁵ Región, 27 May 1936.

¹¹⁶ La Tarde, 27 May 1936; Región, 27 May 1936.

¹¹⁷ Región, 27 May 1936.

¹¹⁸ On these themes, see also Cruz, En el nombre, pp. 146–7.

¹¹⁹ La Tarde, 4, 6 May 1936.

¹²⁰ La Tarde, 4 May 1936.

¹²¹ See the list of JS sections prepared for the JS congress in Apr., CDMH, PS Gijón, F Series, box 92, file 3. For female activism, see M. A. Mateos, ¡Salud, compañeras! Mujeres socialistas en Asturias (1900–1937) (Oviedo, 2007), pp. 190–5 and for a personal testimony, see Á. Flórez Peón, Memorias de Ángeles Flórez Peón “Maricuela” (Oviedo, 2009), pp. 65–70. For Morán, see La Tarde, 18 March 1936.

¹²² A. Shubert, ‘A reinterpretation of the Spanish Popular Front: the case of Asturias’, in The French and Spanish Popular Fronts: Comparative Perspectives, ed. M. Alexander and H. Graham (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 223–4. For warnings about the lack of political engagement, see the letter from Purificación Tomás to Lola Rivas, 29 May 1936, CDMH, PS Gijón, H series, box 15, file 16.

¹²³ Avance, 28 June 1936.

¹²⁴ E.g., the creation of an ‘Antifascist Popular Front’ in Oñón (Mieres) (Avance, 11 July 1936).

¹²⁵ Prada Rodríguez, De la agitación, pp. 102–3; Cobo Romero, De campesinos, pp. 328–9.

¹²⁶ E.g. Macarro Vera, Socialismo, p. 428.

¹²⁷ Juliá, La izquierda, pp. 30–3.

¹²⁸ Avance, 7, 8 July 1936.

¹²⁹ Avance, 30 June, 1, 2 July 1936.

¹³⁰ Avance, 4 July 1936.

¹³¹ Avance, 1, 11, 14 July 1936.

¹³² Avance, 4 July 1936.

¹³³ Avance, 2 July 1936.

¹³⁴ E.g. Avance, 26 June 1936.

¹³⁵ Avance, 26 June 1936.

¹³⁶ Avance, 9 July 1936.

¹³⁷ Cruz attributes the death to Falangists (En el nombre, pp. 138, 198). Ian Gibson’s research led him to identify Carlists as responsible, as cited in J. Casanova and C. Gil Andrés, Twentieth-Century Spain: a History (Cambridge, 2014), p. 156.

¹³⁸ Details in González Calleja, Contrarrevolucionarios, pp. 327–9.

¹³⁹ Barea, Forging, pp. 528–9; R. Fraser, Blood of Spain: an Oral History of the Spanish Civil War (New York, 1979), p. 54.

¹⁴⁰ Avance, 18 July 1936.

¹⁴¹ For first-hand accounts of the coup in Oviedo, see J. A. Cabezas, Asturias: catorce meses de guerra civil (Madrid, 1975), pp. 14–21; C. Martínez, Al final del sendero (Gijón, 1990), pp. 223–4; J. Ambou, Los comunistas en la resistencia nacional republicana: la guerra en Asturias, el País Vasco y Santander (Madrid, 1978), pp. 13–19.