4. Fascism and the politics of policing (1933–4)

In June 1934, L. Vega publicly admonished his neighbours in Tuilla for their complacency towards fascism and issued a rallying call to action:

Fascism had to exist in Tuilla for it accommodated a pre-existing right-wing presence, yet as a shadowy, conspiratorial threat, there was also something qualitatively different about it. Vega’s appeal for urgent action formed part of a wave of articles during the eighteen months prior to October 1934 that focused on fascism in the coalfields. The articles reveal the steady incorporation of fascism into political language and associated imaginaries of the social and political order at the local level. The rise of fascism was not simply the international backdrop to radicalization, but an integral part of the radicalization process, thanks to the alleged emergence and growth of fascism in the coalfields. Vega’s interpretation of fascism as a transmutation of traditional reactionary politics was typical, even as doubts abounded as to what constituted – or could constitute – Spanish fascism.²

Anxieties over fascism injected urgency into political action particularly after the defeat of the divided forces of the former Republican-socialist coalition in elections in November 1933. Fears were compounded – and appeared to be corroborated – by the actions of the new conservative administration. The government was not fascist, but the change in policing strategy stoked fears about the possible implementation of authoritarianism or fascism from above. Stricter and more assertive policing by the security forces unleashed waves of protest in the coalfields in 1934, which constituted the pre-eminent way in which the change in the direction of the Republic was experienced in daily life. The dynamic of protest and more aggressive policing sparked an upward spiral of radicalization and a growing alienation of the coalfield communities from the state. For Avance, only a revolution could resolve this situation.

Militancy in the face of crisis was one response to the dark panorama unfolding for the left in Europe in the mid 1930s. The continued rise of the extreme right prompted a period of soul-searching, rethinking and realignment within the left between 1933 and 1935. Leftists experimented with new economic ideas, including the Belgian ‘Plan de Man’ and left-wing unity initiatives, aided by the Communist abandonment of the isolating ‘class against class’ policy of the ‘Third Period’ (1928–35) in favour of Popular Frontism.³ Even in stable democratic states like the Netherlands, social democrats debated the strategy of political violence.⁴ The year 1934 stands out as being one of particular rebelliousness and restlessness – and the year the left ‘finally recorded a success’.⁵ In addition to the failed Austrian socialist rising, the year saw a failed revolutionary general strike in Portugal, mass left-wing demonstrations in France, the emergence of violent street politics in Britain and several days’ rioting in the Jordaan neighbourhood of Amsterdam. Each episode responded to national dynamics, so similarities should not be overstated, but they do indicate a deepening political crisis, to which left-wing organizations often struggled to respond. The Asturian revolutionary insurrection formed part of this international context, even if nothing approached the scale of events in northern Spain.

Identifying the fascist threat

The first ‘fascist’ posters were pasted on walls in Oviedo in March 1933, although left-wing organizations appeared untroubled by this.⁶ Avance ridiculed the posters, the Socialist Youth summer school programme did not reference fascism and antifascism was not central to PCE policy in 1933.⁷ Certainly, there were few or no avowed fascists in the coalfields in 1933, and fascism was still a minor player in Spanish politics. The party most closely identified with fascism in Spain, Falange Española, was not formed in Madrid until October 1933 (and formally constituted in Asturias six months later), by which point FE had become FE-JONS. Nevertheless, over the course of 1933 fascism increasingly featured in articles sent in from towns and villages in the coalfields with activists like L. Vega identifying it in pre-existing political divisions, while simultaneously worrying that fascism was a new, hidden, growing threat.⁸

The dramatic increase in the use of the term ‘fascist’ in 1933 was sparked by Hitler’s accession to power and the subsequent destruction of the powerful German labour movement, but as a term it was hardly new. Labelling something or someone as ‘fascist’ was a common rhetorical tool to slur enemies prior to 1933. Both Communists and anarchists denounced socialists as ‘social fascists’ and Asturian socialists made a swipe at the anarchist FAI by claiming that only spelling differentiated faístas from fascistas.⁹ Nor was employing the term in such a loose way limited to Spain. The British Independent Labour Party paradoxically labelled the bill for a Public Order Act a ‘fascist bill to stop fascism’, while a British Communist described mass unemployment as a characteristic of fascism.¹⁰

The conceptual looseness of fascism was part of the process of constructing a nascent antifascist culture. Demanding a clear definition from disparate individuals in the Asturian coalfields would be unfair, not least as socialist leaders themselves understood fascism in very different ways.¹¹ The task of translating fascism from the international arena into the Spanish domestic context and the everyday reality of the coalfields was difficult. The lack of fascist organizations in the coalfields meant that it was applied to existing local political divisions, which could mean adding it to existing epithets like ‘clerical monarchist reaction’.¹² Fascism existed as the transmutation of a pre-existing threat, yet at the same time there was something distinctive about it that prompted activists to wrestle with identifying fascists at the local level. This required defining their politics.

Particularly vexing for the Asturian left was the relationship of fascism to Catholicism, and an attempt to clarify the issue in Avance only muddied the waters. It first described fascism as a ‘reactionary movement’ that sought a strong, centralized state and should not be confused with ‘clericalism’, only to later predict that Spanish fascism would be based on Catholicism, as Spain did not exhibit the ‘combination of circumstances’ necessary for ‘authentic fascism’.¹³ For those observing the movements of the political right in Asturias, Catholicism appeared to be entangled with the incipient Falange. Asturians could sign up to FE at the offices of CEDA-supporting Región, while a cathedral canon was one of the first Falangist organizers in the province.¹⁴

The lack of clarity was comprehensible given the wider national context. The founder of FE, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, proceeded from the ‘mainstream of conservative Spanish politics’ and was elected to the Cortes in November 1933 on a right-wing list that included CEDA and Carlist candidates.¹⁵ The CEDA’s own position appeared ambiguous to left-wing activists as it oscillated between a ‘prudent distancing and an admiration which was not always hidden’.¹⁶ José María Gil Robles had admired the Nazi aesthetic at the Nuremberg rallies in autumn 1933 – and its influence would be visible on the aesthetics and pageantry of the rallies of CEDA’s youth wing (JAP) in 1934 – but he criticized the position of Nazism on religion. Yet determining a pure, ‘authentic’ fascism was not necessarily important in identifying a threat to left-wing politics. Engelbert Dollfuss’s Catholic-infused right-wing authoritarianism in Austria was closer to the Spanish CEDA than Nazism, a point not lost on the Spanish left.¹⁷

Criticism of the cinema at the Casa del Pueblo in Sotrondio for showing ‘another fascist film’ illustrates how the fascist threat was dependent on existing ways of imagining political and cultural enemies. The management of the theatre at the Casa del Pueblo was subcontracted to a businesswoman who had conspired with an ‘important fascist’ to project the film, which ‘belonged to a Jesuit company’ who allegedly sold them at half the price of other films. The classic anticlerical trope of the Jesuits operating in a shadowy underhand – ‘Jesuitical’ – manner combined with fascism, which, like the Society of Jesus, was depicted as an international conspiracy. The tentacles of fascism had surreptitiously reached into the heart of socialist organization – ‘the Casa del Pueblo serves for all kinds of fascist propaganda’ – and could prey on the unsuspecting rank and file. Fortunately, ‘the working class community [pueblo], the community with the greatest socialist faith in the province, will not allow this type of show to be projected in the salon of the Casa del Pueblo again’.¹⁸ To label something or someone as fascist was to issue a rallying call to action. The working-class community was called upon to oppose the growth of fascism in their towns and villages.

The context of the Asturian coalfields was different to that of Berlin or Paris. In these metropoles, political struggle was often tied to the capture or defence of particular urban spaces, whether streets or neighbourhoods. Taverns, which were meeting places and headquarters for political groups, were central to the struggle to control districts in the German capital and Nazi Stormtroopers pursued a deliberate policy of disputing particular districts in the capital. Similarly, street fighting between the left and right in Paris centred on the control of particular urban spaces. Newspaper sellers were a particular target, as political groups asserted their claim to control a given space.¹⁹ In the Asturian coalfields, the context of leftist hegemony and lack of avowed fascists, or at least organized right-wing paramilitary street politics, meant that fascism manifested itself in leaflets slipped into magazines at the ateneo, propaganda thrown from a car or alleged secret meetings.²⁰ Fascism was still an encroachment on leftist territory, but it was not a physical presence that invaded from the outside; rather, it emerged from within the valleys themselves. Fascism was a conspiratorial threat that could destroy the unsuspecting left from within, just as fascism had cannibalized European democracies from the inside. The left would only realize this when it was too late. Identifying the emergence of fascism thus entailed leftists demanding that it be driven from their communities.

By the election campaign of autumn 1933, the term ‘fascist’ was common currency in the Asturian left-wing press, although much more so in articles sent in from towns and villages than Avance’s editorials.²¹ Fascism had become an important frame for understanding politics, yet socialist activists dismissed the threat posed by right-wing political mobilization. CEDA campaigners in San Martín del Rey Aurelio were jeered as ‘those catechizing ladies’ and ‘beatas’.²² Ridicule centred on their inferior numbers, age and gender, revealing a flash of misogyny, even if the latter did not represent all on the left, nor extend to their own female activists.²³ The term beata referred to religious older women and was implicitly contrasted with youthful radicalism. The latter was the harbinger of progress while the beatas embodied the old world of obscurantism and superstition. Nor did these women have much agency. ‘Friars and priests’ directed the beatas in their electioneering activities, an allegation which echoed the fears that had divided the PSOE during the parliamentary debate over women’s suffrage in autumn 1931. Many continued to believe that women’s votes would be dictated from the lectern.²⁴ Right-wing activists did not represent the local community as understood by socialists in the autumn of 1933. Socialists were still confident in the left-wing character of the coalfields. Ultimately, this confidence was not well founded.

The election was fought in very different circumstances to 1931. The right was resurgent while the Republican-socialist alliance had collapsed. The electoral law favoured broad coalitions and the CEDA entered into alliances with several different parties, including centrists and those further to the right. In Asturias, the CEDA formed a joint slate with the Liberal-Democratic Republican Party (PRLD). The PRLD maintained a following in Asturias but had not capitalized on the arrival of the Republic despite its historical role as a prominent player in Spanish Republicanism during the Restoration monarchy. The party had shifted towards the right and was vocally anti-socialist. While the right sought alliances, the situation was more complicated for the centre-left and left. The fracturing of the previous government coalition between socialists and left Republicans and the embitterment of the relationship between them impeded collaboration, although a few electoral alliances were formed in certain provinces. In Valencia, the weakness of the socialists meant they united with the left Republicans, while in Malaga, the Communists joined the socialists.²⁵ In Asturias, a proposal for an electoral alliance with the Communists at the congress of the FSA was hotly debated and received support from coalfield delegates. The Executive Committee did not favour the idea and managed to deflect it into a vote authorizing the Committee to enter an alliance if necessary.²⁶

The elections were ‘one of the most bitter-fought and violent in Spanish electoral history’, though ‘probably the fairest of all’, despite ‘serious fraud’ in some areas.²⁷ Abstention was high in areas of anarchist support thanks to anarchists’ campaign against participation in the ballot. The results were a catastrophe for the PSOE and left republicans. The number of socialist deputies halved from 116 to fifty-nine, while the number of deputies for Azaña’s Republican Action dropped from twenty-six to five. The Radical Socialist party, which had suffered breakaways, collapsed from sixty representatives to a single deputy, who was elected thanks to an alliance with the Radical Party in León province. The Radical Party added a further twelve deputies to finish in second place with 102 seats, thanks to co-operating in the second round with the CEDA, who returned the highest number of deputies in the new Cortes (115).

The results generated consternation and intense debate within the socialist leadership. The keys to power now lay in the hands of their opponents from the first biennium, the Radicals and the CEDA. For socialists and left Republicans, the proximity of the CEDA to power threatened the Republic itself. Between the first round of elections on 19 November and the end of the year, the executive committees of the PSOE and UGT held a succession of meetings in which they debated how to proceed. Acute differences lay between Largo Caballero and Besteiro, who presided over the PSOE and UGT respectively. Largo Caballero now favoured the preparation of a revolutionary movement that could respond to the perceived threat of a new administration dismantling the Republic. Building on his proposals, Prieto fleshed out a manifesto for a socialist government in January 1934. Besteiro rejected these plans, as he did any voluntarist strategies. When Besteiro’s own ideas were voted down at successive meetings of the PSOE and UGT executives in January, he had little choice but to resign the presidency of the UGT. Caballeristas replaced the Besteiristas. Planning the movement could now begin in earnest.²⁸ Over the next few months, Largo Caballero oversaw preparations with the aid of a mixed UGT, PSOE and JS committee.

The election results were a shock for socialists in the Asturian coalfields. The CEDA-PRLD alliance won the most votes on a regional level. In the coalfields, the socialists won clear victories, although results higher up the valleys were split more evenly or else favoured the right. In El Condado (Laviana), where tensions ran high during the elections, the CEDA-PRLD obtained 244 votes, while the socialists and Communists received 145 and 140 respectively.²⁹ Aller was divided between socialists in the lower valley and the CEDA-PRLD in the mountains, although ‘the Communists obtained many votes in the whole municipal district’.³⁰

The belittlement of rightist campaigning prior to the elections contrasted sharply with the number of votes deposited in ballot boxes and the results caused consternation among the socialist grassroots. Activists turned to analysing their own communities in an attempt to account for the results. Votes for the right did not fit a Marxist interpretative schema of what should happen in predominantly working class areas, nor did they match the image of community held by local leftists. Unable to account for the number of CEDA-PRLD votes in Trubia, an activist blamed a coalition of treasonous workers and women, both devout older women and the daughters of workers.³¹ Likewise, in Murias (Aller) – the ‘largest centre of reactionaries you will ever come across’ – votes for the right were attributed to ‘disorganized and disoriented’ workers, women (‘you do not get fed [by your mothers] if you do not go to mass’) and the SCOM. Abstention was ascribed to threats.³² Women were now assigned agency, albeit the ability to coerce men into voting against their interests. Voting for the right was not the result of a democratic choice; voters had been duped or coerced.

The election results led to a radical reaction, which manifested itself in the form of a militant backlash. The SOMA called on citizens in Turón to boycott a shop for ‘praising our sweat and then laughing at us’, showing ‘disrespect’ and desiring a regime similar to Nazism or fascism.³³ Between December and the end of January, shots were fired at the homes of young Catholics, at an AP meeting behind closed doors and an address in Oviedo denounced publicly for electoral fraud.³⁴ The first two episodes of frustration and dissent occurred in areas of Aller with a high percentage of votes for the CEDA-PRLD. Tensions resulting from the election results were also apparent in other areas of Spain, but manifested differently according to local political dynamics. In Ciudad Real province, the socialists appear to have borne the brunt of violence, but in an expression of jubilation rather than disappointment. In Torre de Juan Abad the Civil Guard beat up socialists who had confronted an individual shouting support for fascism and the king, and in February a Casa del Pueblo and a socialist mayor were both attacked.³⁵

There was a distinct shift in the political winds in towns across Spain, and the changes were felt on an individual level. While evidence is slim and fragmentary due to the nature of the sources and available testimonies, a letter in Avance from Julia Morán, a resident of Pola de Laviana, gives an indication of the sense of a shifting political equilibrium at the local level and the pressures that accompanied it. Morán was the secretary of the local women’s section of the Socialist Group and the widow of a prominent local socialist.³⁶ Morán lambasted rumours that circulated in Laviana regarding her and her family in a manner that revealed how a person’s local standing was based on a combination of personal and political issues. Although the gossip was not directly related to politics, she framed her indictment of those whispering about her in a defiant declaration of socialist identity:

Morán felt corralled and under pressure in the intimate community of Pola de Laviana due to the change in the political atmosphere after the elections. She reacted not by withdrawing, but by reaffirming her identity in a militant manner.

Morán did not frame her criticism in terms of fascism, but fascism had become an important way of understanding right-wing opposition in the coalfields. Importantly, because of the election results, fascism now had to exist. The results provided a new impetus for trying to locate the hidden, conspiratorial threat of a force that posed an existential danger to the left in the coalfields and the provincial capital. During 1934, leftists reported fascism ‘emerging’ in towns and villages across the coalfields, even if it remained a shadowy presence.³⁸ ‘Viva el fascio’ was daubed on walls in La Felguera, fascism ‘classes’ were supposedly taught in Trubia and a priest allegedly wanted to create a ‘fascist trade union’.³⁹ There was a now greater urgency in the fight against fascism. Leftists issued warnings, and confrontation in the streets became more commonplace. Socialists passed on the names of some ‘monarchist lads’ who reportedly shouted ‘viva fascism’ at ‘comrades’ in Caborana and warned that if the situation continued to deteriorate ‘our patience will run out and it will end in tragedy’.⁴⁰ And leftists did respond to the threat of fascism. The first copies of the Falangist newspaper FE on sale in Oviedo were burned in the street, which led to a scuffle, and a month later communists burned an effigy of Hitler on Shrove Tuesday in a twist on traditional transgressive carnival celebrations.⁴¹

The domestic fascist threat was now no longer identified purely with a semi-hidden local threat. The election of a conservative administration beholden to the CEDA meant that there was great sensitivity to a possible gradual slide towards authoritarian rule or even fascism. Fears in Spain reflected those in Britain and France, where leftists were concerned about the trajectory of their governments; indeed the French government was depicted as pre-fascist in February 1934.⁴² Such concerns are understandable given that Hitler had been appointed to power through the mechanisms of the Weimar Republic, rather than by storming the Reichstag. It was unsurprising, therefore, that the newspaper of the Spanish Socialist Youth labelled the November 1933 elections a ‘German disaster’.⁴³ Nor was Nazi Germany the only example. By mid February, Avance was beginning to talk of Austria, where Dollfuss had cemented his authoritarian, corporatist rule through gradual, legalistic means, as an example of what could happen in Spain.⁴⁴

This interest in international affairs was not new, but there was a greater awareness of what was occurring beyond the Pyrenees in 1934. Lectures at ateneos discussed European politics and Avance published appeals for left-wing unity in France and Belgium.⁴⁵ The imprisoned German Communist leader Ernst Thaelmann was a particular object of interest and support, thanks to the 1934 Comintern campaign for his release.⁴⁶ Organizations across the left sent telegrams to the German embassy appealing for his freedom and the PCE in Oviedo even called on the Asturian left to take advantage of a passing German circus to do so.⁴⁷ International politics filtered down to family celebrations, such as weddings. At a civil ceremony in Olloniego, a speech was given in memory of the ‘brave Austrians’ who had rebelled against Dollfuss.⁴⁸ Remarks at a wedding perhaps came easier than downing tools. A solidarity strike in February to support the plight of the Austrian socialists garnered uneven support.⁴⁹

The politics of policing

The election results marked the beginning of a new cycle in Spanish politics. The legislature was less stable than during the first biennium. There were ten different governments between December 1933 and February 1936. President Alcalá Zamora’s lack of faith in the Republican credentials of the CEDA, which had the highest number of seats in the Cortes, meant that he tasked Radicals with forming governments. First, Radical-led governments relied on the CEDA’s backing in the Cortes in order to wield a parliamentary majority. From October 1934 onwards, Gil Robles’ party also gained control of ministerial portfolios.

The policies of the new governments were a significant departure from the first biennium. Governments did not engage in the wholesale derogation of legislation, but did roll back or paralyse emblematic laws closely identified with the spirit of the Republic of the first biennium. State financial support for the Church was partially reinstated, the law of municipal boundaries was removed, mixed juries, which adjudicated on labour issues, were modified. Land reform, in which Republican ambitions had so far outweighed results, was paralysed. The death penalty was reintroduced and an amnesty was issued for those involved in the failed 1932 coup.⁵⁰ Radical-led governments pressured municipal authorities to come into line with the national government while council halls also became platforms for dissent, from the Basque defence of their traditional economic rights against a new wine tax to Langreo’s direct communication of its opposition to government policies via telegram.⁵¹ The government removed a number of councils that opposed government policy, although the largest wave of removals would only occur after the revolutionary insurrection of October 1934.

The change in the nature of the Republic was manifest in citizens’ daily lives. Holy Week processions – absent in some areas of Spain in previous years – returned to the streets. Emblematic of Catholicism’s renewed visibility in Salamanca was the emergence of Jesuits from hiding to participate in public life.⁵² Backed by a more conservative administration, landowners and industrialists flouted labour legislation. Discrimination in contracting that targeted unionized labourers was the clearest and most common change in rural areas.⁵³ Pay dropped and unemployment climbed.⁵⁴ In the south, the lack of rain reduced the olive harvest and councils distributed bread to the hungry. While widespread protest did not emerge, a current of resentment coursed beneath the surface of rural society.⁵⁵ The situation in the Asturian coalfields was not quite so grave. Employment levels in the mines were stable. The principal manifestation of the changed political climate in the coal valleys was a shift in policing strategy, although there were also reports of landlords taking advantage of the new context to evict tenants.⁵⁶

The government experienced the country’s state of effervescence on its doorstep. Madrid had never been closer to a general strike than during the first few months of 1934, due to strikes in construction, hostelry and printing and metal trades.⁵⁷ The state of unrest was exacerbated by the emergence of street violence. The publication and sale of Falange’s newspaper led to confrontation between supporters and opponents in the streets of the capital. FE-JONS, although a minor player in Spanish politics until 1936, attempted to flex its muscles by demonstrating its influence among students in attacks on left-wing centres. On 9 February, a member of the JS shot dead a Falangist leader, Matías Montero, who became their first ‘martyr’, and street violence between left-and right-wing youths continued to be a feature on the streets of the capital over the following months.⁵⁸

Under pressure from this combination of circumstances – and the CEDA’s demand for a sterner public order policy – the government responded with a crackdown on the possession of arms and explosives.⁵⁹ The frisking of workers proliferated across the country. Anarchists and Communists in Bilbao organized a general strike to protest against police attempts at the searches.⁶⁰ On the same day, the Badajoz city council protested that the wave of searches was stoking ‘alarm’.⁶¹ In the Asturian coalfields, they became a daily occurrence and a very personal experience of the assertion of state power. Security forces stopped mineworkers on their way to work on the main road through the Nalón valley. Avance claimed that those who objected to the searches were beaten.⁶²

The searches added to tensions in the coalfields. In Laviana, a series of incidents that escalated from the arrest of two men for carrying knives reveals the interplay of protest and policing, particularly how left-wing activists were willing to contest state power and assert their own vision of justice. The two men were jailed in Pola de Laviana for possessing knives that Avance alleged were of ‘common usage’ and habitually carried due to the nature of mine work. On the day of their arrest, inhabitants of Pola de Laviana planned to march on the prison to demand the men’s release, but a socialist persuaded them to desist. When two days later it was reported that the men would be subjected to a summary trial, a 400-strong demonstration forced their release from the prison, which was only guarded by four civil guards. The governor sent Assault and Civil Guard reinforcements to the town, where rumours spread of orders for the arrest of left-wing leaders and a general strike was declared. When the governor heard that the strike was to protest at the arrival of security forces, he withdrew them and peace returned.⁶³ Mineworkers returned to work only to down their tools again on hearing news of the arrest of a socialist councillor, Luis Camblor, who was accused of heading the demonstration that released the men. Strikers announced they would not return to work until Camblor was freed, and women planned a demonstration in protest at further arrests.⁶⁴ The strike ended when a letter from Camblor recommending a return to work was read at an assembly authorized by the governor.⁶⁵

This complex dance of strikers, police and the civil governor reveals how the arrests had concentrated fears over the direction of the government while also providing an opportunity to resist the new policing policy. Different notions of justice clashed. Initially, leftists disputed that carrying a knife warranted arrest and a summary trial, but the situation worsened further when extra security forces arrived in the town. For the protestors, the state was intrusive and its use of force excessive; they were capable of keeping peace in Pola de Laviana. The incident also shows the crucial role played by political actors in diffusing incidents. Both the governor and socialists in Laviana took steps to de-escalate protest, even if this meant the removal of security forces. This mediation is important for it would be absent over the following months, even though the office of the civil governor did not change hands. The lack of dialogue combined with police searches would feed a radicalizing spiral through the spring.

The potential for escalation increased markedly in early March due to the appointment of a new minister of the interior. Diego Martínez Barrio, who had sought a preventative approach to public order incidents, resigned, as he was uncomfortable with government policy. He was replaced by Rafael Salazar Alonso, who pursued an assertive, confrontational policing strategy, which included militarizing public order and placing restrictions on civil liberties through use of the state of alarm. The latter suspended constitutional guarantees and authorized the security forces to enter homes without a warrant in certain circumstances.⁶⁶ Salazar Alonso’s policy was informed by his ‘Manichean view of politics’, which showed ‘sympathy for the right’.⁶⁷ His memoirs published after October 1934 reveal a tendency to see revolution in every incidence of labour conflict and an adversarial attitude in which (his) authority was to be upheld at all costs.⁶⁸

A more assertive policing strategy could be effective in quashing protest.⁶⁹ But in the Asturian coalfields it was counterproductive. In late March, a spiral of action-counteraction-action by security forces and leftist organizations revealed the underlying tensions in the coalfields and served to fuel increasing resentment, which translated into militancy. The wave of searches for arms in left-wing cultural and political centres strengthened rather than weakened the resolve of the left. The searches combined with the police’s response to protest eroded the affective links between citizens in the coalfields and the wider Republican state. Between 22 and 24 March, security forces carried out searches of Casas del Pueblo, union centres and even the home of the Republican mayor of Langreo. Workers responded to these searches with a number of localized wildcat strikes.⁷⁰ A few days later police attention turned from union centres to workers themselves. Security forces stopped mineworkers on their way to the pit and rummaged through their food baskets. While they were at work, the Assault Guard ‘invaded’ the villages and searched their homes – even seizing a sewing machine. Crossing the threshold into workers’ homes was particularly offensive. Women protested at the intrusion, which led to four arrests, and mineworkers left the mines early in protest.⁷¹ Checking food baskets may have been humiliating, but entering the household transgressed into the intimacy of the home and was an attack on the masculine authority of the male head of the household.

Councillors in Langreo raised their voices in protest at the searches for targeting the Republic’s supporters and, in particular, at the nature of the searches. The socialists criticized the security forces for not showing ‘the right level of respect to citizens and organizations’: ‘what is most disgraceful is that those who are the target of body and house searches are those people and social and political organizations who worked the hardest and sacrificed the most in the service of the Republic’. By repeatedly searching the very citizens who formed the backbone of the Republic and targeting their private property – even breaking furniture and locks – the central state transgressed the usual boundaries of its actions and broke a social contract between local society and state institutions. Such measures could receive approval when used against the Republic’s enemies, but now the security forces focused on those whose ‘loyalty to the Republic ha[d] been proven’.⁷²

Holy Week loomed, with the prospect of the fractious situation escalating further as political anger transferred to the Church. Whereas in previous years sporadic iconoclastic acts had targeted remote shrines, attacks on the Church now occurred in town centres. On Holy Wednesday, dynamite was thrown into the patio of the parish church in Sama. The following day youths tried to disturb the religious service, leading to a skirmish with young Catholics, and stones being thrown at the parish priest.⁷³ Rumours of a possible religious procession in Mieres sparked a demonstration that was broken up by the Assault Guard, who fired a hundred rounds. The security forces arrested left-wing leaders across the coalfields, which fuelled strikes and protests that received massive support. A stoppage by 1,500 at the Mariana pit in Mieres spread to Aller and Lena, leading to 15,000 out on strike. The sharp escalation prompted trade unions in Mieres to issue a joint appeal for the strikers to return to work.⁷⁴ It seems unlikely that the arrested leaders committed the iconoclastic acts. Rather these were preventative detentions to dampen protest. Instead, the arrests were denounced as ‘arbitrary’ and accompanied by wide-ranging strikes. The arrests appeared to confirm Avance’s narrative of an unjust, persecutory state.⁷⁵ Protest had become larger and more militant than in previous years.

The security forces’ actions were a deliberate demonstration of authority, and even intentionally provocative. When a Langrean Republican association complained to the prime minister that the searches were ‘counterproductive’ and would not calm ‘spirits’, their own centre was searched.⁷⁶ The civil governor stated airily that he ‘was sure that this excitation would not have any consequences’ and refused to change tack even as the situation escalated.⁷⁷ In marked contrast to his approach to the February conflict in Laviana, there would be no change in strategy.⁷⁸

The initial clampdown by the state security forces in February had coincided with the ‘Austrian Civil War’. The short-lived uprising by the socialist paramilitary forces, the Schutzbund, was also sparked by arms searches conducted by the Austrian state. Indecision wracked the declining socialist movement, particularly in Vienna, where the leadership was reluctant to pre-empt the state. The February insurrection was thus a desperate, last-gasp reaction by a socialist movement far from the height of its powers.⁷⁹ The radical, militant attitudes in the Asturian coalfields appear to have been absent in Austria. Austrian socialists displayed ‘verbal maximalism’ but their actions were cautious and their demands stopped short of calling for a dictatorship of the proletariat as Largo Caballero did.⁸⁰

In Spain, socialists framed the situation in urgent terms that served to propel radicalization. During a speech in February 1934, González Peña declared that there were only two ways forward, ‘Germany and Italy, or Russia’. The audience rose to its feet, applauded, and many shouted ‘viva la revolución’.⁸¹ This reduction of political options also drew Asturias into a wider European framework and compounded a sense of urgency. Avance cultivated the accusation that the left – and therefore the working class – was under attack, and contributed to stiffening of resolve and a deepening divide between the left and the state through radical, defiant rhetoric. Not only did the authorities ‘persecute’ the working class by searching ‘only the Casas del Pueblo and the centres of the working class’, but the searches – described as ‘razzia’ in reference to house raids conducted during colonial warfare in North Africa – meant that Asturias found itself in a ‘full state of war’.⁸² This image of a provocative state persecuting the working class and causing the country to slide towards war would be repeated over the coming months and formed a crucial part of the newspaper’s framing of the need for a revolutionary uprising.

Unite, proletarian brothers!

Whether ‘red, white, yellow, [or] flesh-coloured’, united fronts were on everyone’s lips in early 1934, Región observed.⁸³ Less than two months after this remark, delegates of the Asturian socialist and anarchist movements signed an agreement founding a Workers’ Alliance in the back room of a bar in Gijón. The short public announcement in Avance expressed the alliance’s intention to combat fascism and war, but in private the agreement declared the aim of working towards ‘the triumph of social revolution in Spain’.⁸⁴ Disguising the revolutionary intent enabled the alliance to work ‘freely, without raising the authorities’ suspicions’.⁸⁵

Nazism’s ascension to power and the destruction of the German left placed renewed impetus on bridging deep divisions on the left. Co-operation was nonetheless difficult and progress tortuous in Spain, as it was elsewhere. Collaboration between socialists and Communists in Germany and Austria was only achieved once the movements were forced underground by dictatorships. In France, the socialist and Communist rank and file had demonstrated together on 12 February 1934 in opposition to right-wing leagues, but it was nearly six months before the parties signed an antifascist unity pact. The road to the French Popular Front agreed in July 1935 would be lengthy and winding.⁸⁶

Discussions of left-wing unity in Spain usually centre on the Catalan dissident communist Joaquin Maurín.⁸⁷ Previously a CNT and PCE activist, Maurín was a sophisticated Marxist thinker and anti-Stalinist who had co-founded the dissident communist BOC.⁸⁸ The BOC founded the first ‘Workers’ Alliance against Fascism’ together with two other minority leftist organizations (the Catalan Socialist Union and the treintista Libertarian Syndicalist Federation) in Barcelona in March 1933. The Alliance broadened after the November elections to include the Catalan socialists, although the most powerful and numerous working class organization in Catalonia, the CNT, continued to refuse to participate.⁸⁹ From this Catalan kernel, the Workers’ Alliance seeded through Spain, reaching its apogee a year later in the Asturian Workers’ Alliance, which was one of a patchwork of alliances across the country.⁹⁰ Yet this genealogy of left-wing unity initiatives only goes so far in explaining the emergence of the Asturian Alliance. Equally important is both renewed agitation among the rank and file for an alliance or united front in Asturias, and a shift in the Asturian anarchist movement. Asturian anarchist leaders jailed after the failed anarchist rising of December 1933 penned a joint appeal to the regional CNT to think afresh about collaborating with the socialists. Although opposed by the national CNT, the Asturian anarchists nevertheless pursued an alliance over the following months.

A renewed wave of grassroots unity initiatives revealed rank-and-file collaboration at the local level. Such initiatives had emerged in other contexts, like the Ruhr, France and Portugal.⁹¹ Most prominent in the coalfields was the Langrean Pro-United Front Committee, which was similar to the CPUT of 1933. The Committee was a cross-union alliance and ‘revolutionary bloc’ against fascism at the local level that tapped into rank-and-file enthusiasm. Rallies of ‘extraordinary importance’ attended by up to 6,000 leftists were ‘one of the most transcendental events for the future of workers’ and the initiative quickly sparked discussion in other union sections and even applications to join the Langrean Front.⁹² The Langrean Front featured individuals of prominent standing to a greater degree than the CPUT; socialists included a candidate in the 1933 elections who was a member of the National Federation of the JS, and the son of the SOMA founder. Unity initiatives beyond the Langrean Front included joint strike and boycott committees and a candidacy to head the Ateneo in Mieres, all of which consisted of varying combinations of socialists, Communists and anarchists.⁹³

The socialist leadership’s response to these initiatives was initial silence followed by scolding criticism. Avance’s reaction was woolly: unity ‘need not emerge … from any private or local initiatives’ as unity was apparently ‘already … a reality’.⁹⁴ Commenting on the Langrean Front, Amador Fernández criticized ‘spectacles that leave a lot to be desired’, labelling committees formed on local terms ‘unacceptable’.⁹⁵ Strategic considerations belonged to the leadership. Largo Caballero’s position was ambiguous. In public he welcomed alliances, but in private he was more interested in strengthening the socialist movement than reaching out to Communists or anarchists. He favoured an Alliance in Catalonia due to socialist weakness in the region. Elsewhere they were ‘tolerated’.⁹⁶ Such a position was consistent with Largo Caballero’s commitment to positioning the socialist movement as the sole representative of the working class.

It is commonplace to state that the PCE rejected Alliances and maintained its preference for a united front from below until September, when their position changed. The Asturian Communists joined the Workers’ Alliance on the cusp of the insurrection.⁹⁷ Yet this version of events overlooks the frequent collaboration across the left in the coalfields throughout 1934, including in boycotts, strikes, committees against war and fascism, and during 1 May celebrations, despite Communist criticism of the Alliance.⁹⁸ BOC leader Maurín even shared a stage with PCE members at the May Day rally in Mieres.⁹⁹ Asturias does not appear to have been unique, as there were cases of grassroots co-operation involving the PCE. In Ourense, near Portugal, and in Cádiz, socialists, anarchists and Communists signed a Workers’ Alliance in February and co-organized the festivities on 1 May respectively.¹⁰⁰ If the Communist position was complex, so was that of the Asturian anarchists. Despite anarchist signatures to the Asturian Workers’ Alliance, many were far from convinced by the initiative, particularly in the coalfields. The agreement came under attack from anarchists in La Felguera, where the more radical FAI was influential. Dissident voices grew in strength over the summer of 1934 and the Workers’ Alliance was only ratified by four votes at the regional CNT conference in mid September. Most anarchist mining unions voted against it.¹⁰¹

The Alliance did not greatly affect the day-to-day life of left-wing activists in the coalfields. The central committee organized some initial rallies, designated local representatives, intervened in a couple of strikes and discussed some military considerations regarding a possible revolutionary movement. But in August, for example, ‘nothing worth mentioning occurred in the Alliance Committee’.¹⁰² Rather than working towards actual revolution – its stated goal – the Alliance was an umbrella under which separate unions developed their own projects.¹⁰³ Planning the revolutionary movement was a socialist affair and they refused to share the arms they were smuggling into the province with anarchists.¹⁰⁴ Rather than the Alliance embedding itself in the everyday functioning of union politics, it was a banner that provided a sense of dynamism and confidence in future victory.

Towards the cliff edge

The Asturian socialists’ decision to put their signatures to the Asturian Workers’ Alliance could be interpreted as crowning the process of radicalization by bringing the leadership into line with the rank and file. In reality, fractiousness continued between the two. The socialist hierarchy wanted to limit strike action, but they could not prevent it. Thousands joined a PCE-organized strike in April despite SOMA opposition and in May, a conflict at the Sotón mine soon revealed the fragility of the leadership’s influence over the rank and file. A workforce-organized wildcat strike in protest at a mining deputy escalated into a lockout, the deployment of security forces to guard the pit, solidarity strikes along the Nalón valley, shootouts between strikers and civil guards and the use of physical force against jeering female demonstrators.¹⁰⁵ The SOMA managed to end the strike only for 15,000 to down tools two weeks later when the same mining deputy was transferred to a different mine. A self-designated ‘Alliance committee’ emerged to lead the strike, although the anarchist SUM and the SOMA both distanced themselves from it.¹⁰⁶

The SOMA admonished the rank and file in a manner that recalled earlier criticism. For the SOMA, the strike was short-sighted and showed a lack of maturity. It aimed at ‘nothing more than to provoke an encounter with the security forces to justify revolutionary attitudes in which those who start them are never those who end up worse off’.¹⁰⁷ As Antuña warned the JS in July, what was needed, ‘now more than ever, [was] discipline’.¹⁰⁸ This emphasis on self-control and limiting strike action is usually portrayed as an attempt to protect the socialist movement ahead of a revolutionary movement, yet it was also the continuation of the existing socialist strategy of trying to keep the rank and file on a short leash.

Meanwhile, a major strike in agriculture had been incubating in the south of Spain since the winter, due to the work of the new leadership of the socialist landworkers’ union, the FNTT. When the government announced the derogation of the law of municipal boundaries, the FNTT declared it would strike. The strike did not enjoy the unanimous support of the socialist leadership, which feared for the repercussions it might have on socialist organizations. The fears turned out to be well founded. The government made an early attempt at negotiating a solution, but then moved to crush the strike. On 29 May, the harvest was declared a ‘public service’, rendering the strike illegal. The strike began on 5 June and while it mobilized 200,000 across central, southern and eastern Spain, strikes took place in less than a third of the municipalities where they had been announced. The press was censored, workers’ centres were closed down and the parliamentary immunity of socialist deputies was violated. The authorities arrested 7,000 strikers – though in areas like Valencia, most were released soon after the conflict ended – and the government replaced municipal councils with steering committees.¹⁰⁹ The disarticulation of left-wing organizations in these areas meant they were too weak to participate in the October revolutionary insurrection.

On the northern coast, Avance continued its duel with the authorities. As the emblem of socialist radicalism, it had become a target for the authorities. The civil governor ordered the sequestration of the newspaper on ninety-four days out of 186 in 1934, fined it 25,000 pesetas and jailed the editor on three occasions. Such moves only confirmed Avance’s message that the state was sliding towards authoritarianism.¹¹⁰ As the newspaper battled the authorities in what it described as a ‘war of extermination’ on the ‘working class press’, it strengthened its ties with its readers, who contributed small donations to pay the fines. The newspaper printed long lists of its benefactors.¹¹¹ Mineworkers in Barredos went on strike when a sequestered edition did not arrive.¹¹² The jailed editor Javier Bueno received well-publicized visits from fellow socialists, including children, photographs of whom were published in Avance. Such visits to Bueno in prison imitated, consciously or otherwise, the Communist strategy of sending delegations to visit imprisoned German Communist leader Ernst Thälmann in 1934 in order to publicize his plight.¹¹³

Outside the walls of Oviedo’s Model Prison, red-shirted members of the Socialist Youth paraded in a show of collective strength and support for Bueno in a manner that revealed their increasing penchant for the trappings of paramilitarism. This martial style – in dress, gestures and actions – had spread through interwar European youth politics. The raised fist salute, which was first used by German Communists in the 1920s, emerged in Spain in 1934 and was performed during demonstrations and by uniformed JS members attending the funeral of Juanita Rico – who died at the hands of Falangists in Madrid – in June.¹¹⁴ The Socialist Youth propagated martial politics through publishing extracts from the Comintern ‘handbook for revolution’, Armed Insurrection, and a ‘Decalogue of the Young Socialist’, which called on JS members to arm themselves and form militias.¹¹⁵ This was politics defined by ‘action’, in which ideological debates became secondary to actively fighting one’s opponents.¹¹⁶ Even so, while JS members undertook training in preparation for a revolutionary movement, their emphasis was on occupying public space and showing collective strength, rather than pursuing pitched battles, much as the German Social Democrats’ Iron Front in the early 1930s was a form of militant posturing rather than a serious street-fighting force.¹¹⁷ While skirmishes between youths occurred in Madrid, there is little evidence of such encounters in the streets of Oviedo.¹¹⁸

The Socialist Youth formed the backbone of the militias who were training for the future revolutionary movement. The organization of the movement fell to a Liaison Committee with members drawn from the PSOE, UGT and JS. Largo Caballero and the Federation of the Socialist Youth (FJS) issued directives to the militias.¹¹⁹ In February, just before Renovación published the ‘Decalogue of the Young Socialist’, the FJS issued a circular urging JS sections to organize armed militias. Thirty-eight replied that they were undertaking this task or had done so already, six of which were Asturian. The fifth Congress of the Socialist Youth dictated that these militias be organized in a military manner, with a clear hierarchy and the formation of special technical groups.¹²⁰ Evidence is thin as to the extent of training activists received. Even in Madrid – the heartland of the radicalized Caballerista youth – the organization of the JS militias was not completed prior to October.¹²¹ Hints in Avance provide possible indicators of paramilitary training through reference to ‘excursionists’. A group from Pola de Lena formed in May only carried out their first trip into the mountains in late August.¹²²

In addition to training militias, socialists engaged in gunrunning and the stockpiling of arms. Arms arrived from a variety of different sources, including Portuguese revolutionaries, a police chief in Madrid, the Alfa sewing machine and small arms factory in Eibar just outside Bilbao, and the arms factory in Oviedo, from which they were smuggled out piece by piece.¹²³ Local socialist and anarchist groups fundraised for small arms purchases and organized creative means of smuggling weapons into the province, which meant they obtained a motley collection of weapons.¹²⁴ The arms caches were insufficient for the needs of an insurrection, but the trafficking did perform another function. The transportation and hiding of weapons involved a large number of individuals and creative strategies. Engaging in these conspiratorial, illicit activities was empowering, fostered in-group bonds and bolstered the crystallization of anti-government feeling through encouraging an adversarial, besieged attitude.¹²⁵

How to deal with fractious, violent, uniformed street politics was a question many European governments faced in the interwar period. In the wake of violence at a British Union of Fascists rally in London in June 1934, the British parliament discussed restrictions on the trappings of paramilitary style. In Spain, the government banned – at least in theory – political salutes in March, flags in June and excursions by uniformed individuals at the end of July.¹²⁶ The government understood paramilitarism as the cause rather than the effect – or affected style – of radicalism. As arrests for wearing uniforms started taking place, the Asturian JS was defiant, declaring that there was no

Arrests for wearing paramilitary uniforms continued through August. At the end of the month the government introduced new restrictions on the political participation of those aged under twenty-three, which Salazar Alonso later admitted had been ‘designed to circumscribe the left’.¹²⁸ The JS accused the government of offering them as a ‘sacrifice’ to ‘capitalist fascism’ in ‘another of the fascist measures dictated by the monarchizing [sic] conglomerate’.¹²⁹ Decrying the law as fascist went beyond a rhetorical flourish; rather it formed part of the wider framing of Spain’s perceived onward march towards authoritarianism.

The perceived threat of the government as a possible midwife to fascism contrasted with the alternative revolutionary future depicted by Avance. A bellicose state was pushing the working classes to act. In mid August, Avance warned that ‘the country, [was] on a war footing’ because of the mobilization of the army and rejected the idea that the Republic could return to its ‘primitive position’.¹³⁰ The working class no longer desired the Republic of 1931, but rather envisaged a better future through revolution.¹³¹ As the newspaper reiterated:

Fatalistically, Avance declared that ‘the only disastrous revolution would be that which is not attempted’. Comparing Spain to Austria and Germany, it concluded that ‘the case of Spain is, essentially, the same’. The decision had to be made between ‘declining rapidly towards disappearance and trying to save either everything with victory or a great deal through the fortitude of the action’.¹³³

September opened with a flashpoint in Sama that revealed the continuing difficult coexistence of the security forces and the working-class left, and the growing fracture between the local community and the wider state. Security forces had gathered in the town ahead of a demonstration against war and fascism announced by the Women’s Socialist Group and which appears to have been unauthorized.¹³⁴ The march in the evening was peaceful and headed by women carrying banners. As it neared the town hall, the security forces intervened to disperse it by force. A shot was fired in unclear circumstances, which injured a security guard, and the security forces responded with a round of firing. Demonstrators and bystanders fled as doors closed and shutters slammed down. Three men and three women were injured, and a bystander was killed by a shot to the heart.¹³⁵ Avance’s depiction of the aftermath of the shooting was thick with rage and resentment:

Not only did the security forces humiliate local inhabitants and treat children inhumanely, but they were an occupying force that was incompatible with the coalfields.

Avance’s rhetoric was matched by a breakdown in the channels of communication between the different layers of the state. The civil governor refused to speak via telephone to the mayor of Sama or Matilde de la Torre, a socialist deputy who was in Sama at the time. Avance often engaged in demagogic provocative remarks about the authorities, but in this case, its comments were judicious: ‘On other occasions, [the mayor’s] intervention was requested by governors to prevent things which were about to happen, which were about to turn into tragedies like yesterday. And the tragedy was avoided’.¹³⁷ The governor showed a similar lack of desire for dialogue during a conflict days later at the Fondón mine when the sacking of five mineworkers for demanding a minimum wage led to a sit-down strike at the coalface with two mining deputies taken hostage. The governor responded by sending assault and civil guards, banned the SOMA from intervening and avowed that his authority would be maintained at all costs: the ‘intolerable rebellion’ would be ‘punished as it deserve[d]’.¹³⁸

The growing gulf between the coalfield left and the security forces was not limited to Avance’s rhetoric. For the funeral of the bystander killed in the demonstration in Sama – Saturnino Fernández, a JS member – the mayor requested the withdrawal of the state security forces and the day passed peacefully. But the security forces returned to the streets the following day and started frisking citizens, to which socialists, anarchists and Communists responded by striking. The strike committee even asked people to leave Sama to avoid bloodshed.¹³⁹ The ability of the municipal authorities and their supporters to maintain order – their order – by themselves contrasted with the impossibility of leftists and the security forces coexisting in the streets. The organizing committee of a joint Socialist and Communist Youth rally in Oviedo echoed this sentiment. In rejecting the presence of the police they aimed to give a ‘day of peace to the gravedigger, jailer and hospital staff’’.¹⁴⁰

The socialist and Communist rally was to protest against a JAP rally at the symbolic Asturian site of Covadonga, in the west of the province. Covadonga was mythologized as the eighth-century birthplace of the ‘Reconquest’ of Spain and was a site of Marian pilgrimage.¹⁴¹ Both supporters and opponents understood the long-planned rally as a barometer of support for each side in the province. While a successful rally for the JAP would show Asturias to be the heartland of true Catholic Spain and a repository of disciplined martial virtue, if it were sabotaged by the Workers’ Alliance, the left’s ability to shut down the province would reveal the strength and unity of the Asturian working class.

The rally took place on 9 September, the day after the feast day of Our Lady of Covadonga. Unsurprisingly, both sides claimed victory. Región asserted that ‘nothing [had] impeded the gathering of ten thousand people’, even as it denounced ‘coercion’ that prevented sympathizers from attending the ‘outstanding’ event. In an image with powerful religious undertones, the newspaper explained that one AP member had walked to Covadonga due to the transportation problems caused by the strike.¹⁴² Meanwhile Avance proudly described the strike as ‘absolute’. Strikers sabotaged train lines, blocked roads with stones and tree trunks, scattered tacks across roads, burned copies of El Debate and ABC and fired on cars, although no one was injured.¹⁴³ The strike was a victory over the right and the state; it was a ‘demonstration of unity, the effects of which the concentration of police forces from five provinces could not weaken’. Unity provided the energy and instilled confidence in victory: ‘United we will always triumph whenever we try. United we will be able to introduce a society of justice, of workers emancipated from the capitalist yoke’. The ‘bloc’ that was forming was ‘indestructible’, even if ‘hours of rough struggle’ lay ahead.¹⁴⁴

Preparations for the socialist revolutionary movement continued. Coinciding with the JAP rally, socialists botched a sea-borne arms shipment of 329 boxes of arms and munitions on a boat called the Turquesa. The Civil Guard interrupted the landing of the supplies and only ninety-eight made it into the hands of Asturian socialists. Nearly half remained on the boat. High-ranking socialists were implicated. Indalecio Prieto, who had been present during the operation, managed to escape to Bilbao and only parliamentary immunity saved Amador Fernández and Ramón González Peña from arrest.¹⁴⁵ Twenty-three were detained, including councillor and leading Langrean socialist Belarmino Tomás, and the civil governor replaced Asturian socialist mayors with his delegates or else stripped them of their responsibility for public order.¹⁴⁶

Searches increased in Asturias and across Spain from mid September. In the coalfields, security forces entered socialist, anarchist and Communist centres, the town hall in Mieres and the socialist-owned San Vicente mine, but emerged empty handed, except for a few pistols and, in Turón, a few bombs.¹⁴⁷ The minister of the interior decreed the state of alarm and there was a return to mass searches in the streets. A wave of localized strikes in the coalfields revealed the fractious and tense situation, although these were expressions of local dissidence rather than revolutionary preparation. Socialist policy preferred to avoid a government clampdown and waste of resources. The civil governor complained that ‘many strikes are being declared on one pretext one day and on a different one the next’ and declared them illegal.¹⁴⁸ In the midst of rising tensions and as local feast days approached, there was a return to targeting religious buildings, including a shrine, chapel and a rectory, with fire and explosives.¹⁴⁹

The political tensions not only manifested themselves in such attacks and tussles between left-wing militants and the state. They were also embedded in the dynamics of everyday encounters and reveal the sharpness of political divisions at the local level. In the early hours of 1 September, Casimiro D. was stabbed outside a bar in El Entrego (San Martín del Rey Aurelio). He had been accused of planning to attend the JAP rally and of intending to sign-up to the Assault Guard – and therefore betraying the working-class community – which he vigorously denied.¹⁵⁰ Two weeks later a further violent encounter occurred in the same area. Jaime C., a forty-four-year-old businessman and well-known rightist, recounted that he was on a train bound for the rally in Covadonga when Herminio V., a shop assistant and Avance contributor, boarded the train and ordered Jaime to alight. This policing of behaviour was backed by the threat of violence: when Jaime refused to leave the train, Herminio drew a pistol, to which Jaime responded by brandishing his own. The train lurched into motion, shots were fired and Herminio and his companions jumped off the train. Herminio’s account of the afternoon differed markedly. He denied the accusations and claimed he had been in a bar all afternoon, which several others corroborated.¹⁵¹

By the end of September, repeated tussles with state security forces had hardened militant attitudes and created a perceptible fissure between local society and the broader state. Avance’s rhetoric had traced a narrative of the descent of the Republic towards fascism, which fed off the identification of fascism in towns and villages across the coalfields. The dark horizon of fascism was juxtaposed with the bright future of revolution, a prospect Avance continued to promote. As searches intensified in late September, the newspaper depicted the security forces as a foreign occupying force and warned that armies caused wars.¹⁵² The state was provoking the working class into an inevitable confrontation, while the latter ‘consider[ed] Spain to be at the door of a proletarian revolution with a very good chance of triumphing’.¹⁵³

However militant the politics at the local level, they did not amount to a crisis of the state. Nor did the crisis of government that marked the beginning of October, when the CEDA withdrew its support for Prime Minister Samper’s government and he resigned. Socialist leaders Besteiro and de los Ríos advised the president to call fresh elections, but Alcalá Zamora turned to Lerroux and asked him to form a government with CEDA ministers.¹⁵⁴ Largo Caballero had been confident that the CEDA’s dubious Republican credentials would dissuade Alcalá Zamora from doing so, but he miscalculated. Having repeatedly threatened that the socialists would respond if the CEDA entered government, Largo Caballero was left with little choice when the new ministers were announced on 4 October. The Spanish October ran to a stricter and more public timetable than other episodes of leftist rebelliousness across Europe in 1934.

France’s February days and the Austrian Civil War responded to long-term processes and the specificities of each national context, yet they were also respective sudden mass eruptions of militancy within a broader context of leftist flux and reconfiguration between 1933 and 1935 as fascism and right-wing authoritarianism continued to spread across the continent. While fascism has often been depicted as the broad contextual frame for the events of October 1934 in Asturias, the effects of the perceived threat of fascism extended further than this and reached down into the everyday, local level of politics in the Asturian coalfields. Fascism, as a new, hidden, conspiratorial threat, moulded conflicts and how politics was interpreted in the coalfields and how the trajectory of national politics was imagined. The actions of state security forces compounded fears of a slide towards authoritarianism, as did the new development of the encroachment of the Assault and Civil Guard into spaces of left-wing and working-class control, whether homes or political centres. The left fiercely resisted this encroachment, which resulted in a spiralling cycle of protest and repression. Assertive policing alienated the communities of the coalfields from the Republic, even as revolutionary preparations and Avance’s radical rhetoric framed the only possible solution to decline as a leap forwards to revolution.

______________

¹ Avance, 7 June 1934.

² Rivers of ink have been spilled defining fascism. Much less has been written on leftists’ understanding of fascism, although work on the response of the British left is more comprehensive (K. Hodgson, Fighting Fascists: the British Left and the Rise of Fascism, 1919–1939 (Manchester, 2010) and D. Stone, Responses to Nazism in Britain: Before War and Holocaust (Basingstoke, 2003)).

³ See G.-R. Horn, European Socialists Respond to Fascism: Ideology, Activism and Contingency in the 1930s (New York, 1996).

⁴ K. Mennen, ‘Necessary evil, last resort or totally unacceptable? Social Democratic discussions on political violence in Germany and the Netherlands’, in Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940, ed. C. Millington and K. Passmore (London, 2015), pp. 98, 100.

⁵ G. Eley, Forging Democracy: the History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (Oxford, 2002), p. 263.

⁶ El Noroeste, 19 March 1933.

⁷ Avance, 8, 12 March, 11 Aug. 1933; El Noroeste, 22, 30 March, 6 Apr., 12 May 1933; F. Erice, ‘El PCE en Asturias, de los orígenes a la guerra civil’, in Los comunistas en Asturias (1920–1982), ed. F. Erice (Gijón, 1996), p. 61.

⁸ For similar simultaneous discussion in the Basque socialist movement, see R. Miralles, El socialismo vasco durante la II República: organización, ideología, política y elecciones, 1931– 1936 (Bilbao, 1988), p. 189.

⁹ 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), p. 82; Avance, 30 July 1933.

¹⁰ T. Buchanan, ‘Beyond Cable Street: new approaches to the historiography of antifascism in Britain in the 1930s’, in Rethinking Antifascism: History, Memory and Politics, 1922 to the Present, ed. H. García, M. Yusta, X. Tabet and C. Clímaco (New York, 2016), p. 66.

¹¹ See F. Gallego, Barcelona, mayo de Barcelona: la crisis del antifascismo en Cataluña (Barcelona, 2007), ch. 2; H. García, ‘Was there an antifascist culture in 1930s Spain?’, in García, Yusta, Tabet and Clímaco, Rethinking, p. 96.

¹² Avance, 5 Sept. 1933. The lack of clarity is noted by many, e.g., S. Souto Kustrín, ‘Octubre de 1934: historia, mito y memoria’, Hispania Nova. Revista de Historia Contemporánea, xi (2013), 477–81, at p. 488.

¹³ Avance, 6 Sept. 1933.

¹⁴ M. Suárez Cortina, El fascismo en Asturias (Gijón, 1981), pp. 125, 154–6.

¹⁵ M. Vincent, ‘Spain’, in The Oxford Handbook of Fascism, ed. R. J. B. Bosworth (Oxford, 2009), p. 365.

¹⁶ J. Jiménez Campo, El fascismo en la crisis de la Segunda República española (Madrid, 1979), p. 71. See also P. Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform, Reaction and Revolution in the Second Republic (London, 1978), p. 47.

¹⁷ Souto Kustrín, ‘Octubre’, pp. 488ff.

¹⁸ Avance, 26 Oct. 1933.

¹⁹ C. Millington, ‘Street-fighting men: political violence in interwar France’, English Historical Review, cxxix (2014); E. Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communist Party and Political Violence, 1929 – 1933 (Cambridge, 1983), especially pp. 22, 111–27.

²⁰ Avance, 1 Aug., 20 Sept. 1933.

²¹ E.g. Avance, 16 Nov. 1933.

²² Avance, 28 Oct., 2, 10 Nov. 1933.

²³ Women were heavily involved in campaigning in Asturias and more widely. For Asturias, see M. A. Mateos, ¡Salud, compañeras! Mujeres socialistas en Asturias (1900–1937) (Oviedo, 2007), pp. 152–7. For female rightist mobilization, see I. Blasco Herranz, Paradojas de la ortodoxia: política de masas y militancia católica femenina en España (1919–1939) (Zaragoza, 2003) and M. Vincent, ‘The politicization of Catholic women in Salamanca, 1931–1936’, in Elites and Power in Twentieth Century Spain: Essays in Honour of Sir Raymond Carr, ed. F. Lannon and P. Preston (Oxford, 1990). For the anticlerical depiction of the beata, see M. P. Salomón Chéliz, ‘Beatas sojuzgadas por el clero: la imagen de las mujeres en el discurso anticlerical en la España del primer tercio del siglo XX’, Feminismo/s, ii (2003), 41–58.

²⁴ Avance, 28 Oct. 1933.

²⁵ 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. 101.

²⁶ J. Girón, ‘Asturias, Octubre de 1934: el fracaso de un intento de alianza electoral entre socialistas y comunistas’, in Octubre 1934: cincuenta años para la reflexión, ed. G. Jackson et al. (Madrid, 1985), pp. 199–201.

²⁷ E. González Calleja, Cifras cruentas: las víctimas mortales de la violencia sociopolítica en la Segunda República española (1931–1936) (Granada, 2015), p. 246; N. Townson, The Crisis of Democracy in Spain: Centrist Politics under the Spanish Second Republic (Brighton, 2000), p. 193. For allegations of fraud and coercion in Asturias, see Avance, 23, 24 Nov. 1933 and El Noroeste, 23 Nov. 1933.

²⁸ This account is based on J. Aróstegui, Largo Caballero: el tesón y la quimera (Barcelona, 2013), pp. 340–51; S. Juliá, ‘República, revolución y luchas internas’, in El socialismo en España: desde la fundación del PSOE hasta 1975, ed. S. Juliá (Madrid, 1986), pp. 238–40; M. Bizcarrondo, Historia de la UGT, iii: Entre la democracia y la revolución, 1931–1936 (6 vols, Madrid, 2008), pp. 97–103.

²⁹ Avance, 22 Nov. 1933.

³⁰ El Noroeste, 23 Nov. 1933.

³¹ Avance, 25 Nov. 1933.

³² Avance, 17 Jan. 1934.

³³ Avance, 7 Dec. 1933.

³⁴ Avance, 28 Nov. 1933; Región, 3, 27 Jan. 1934.

³⁵ F. Rey, Paisanos en lucha: exclusión política y violencia en la Segunda República española (Madrid, 2008), pp. 343, 346.

³⁶ Avance, 15 June, 9 Nov. 1932; Mateos, ¡Salud, compañeras!, p. 129. For her biography, see the ‘Diccionario biográfico del socialismo español’ <http://www.fpabloiglesias.es/archivo-y-biblioteca/diccionario-biografico/biografias/17680_moran-sanchez-julia> [accessed 25 Oct. 2018].

³⁷ Avance, 23 Feb. 1934.

³⁸ Avance, 9 Jan. 1934.

³⁹ Avance, 16, 17 Feb., 15 Mar. 1934.

⁴⁰ Avance, 16 Jan. 1934.

⁴¹ Avance, 18 Jan., 14 Feb. 1934; Región, 14 Feb. 1934; El Noroeste, 15 Feb. 1934.

⁴² Buchanan, ‘Beyond Cable Street’, pp. 65–6; B. Jenkins and C. Millington, France and Fascism: February 1934 and the Dynamics of Political Crisis (Abingdon, 2015), p. 3.

⁴³ S. Souto Kustrín, ‘Y ¿Madrid? ¿Qué hace Madrid?’: movimento revolucionario y acción colectiva (1933–1936) (Madrid, 2004), p. 56.

⁴⁴ Avance, 15 Feb. 1934.

⁴⁵ Avance, 6, 20 May, 31 Aug. 1934. The Madrid-based Communist-turned-socialist student Manuel Tagüeña recalled discussing international affairs with his neighbourhood cell (M. Tagüeña Lacorte, Testimonio de dos guerras (Barcelona, 1978), p. 34).

⁴⁶ See A. Rabinbach, ‘Freedom for Thälmann: the Comintern and the orchestration of the campaign to free Ernst Thälmann, 1933–39’, in García, Yusta, Tabet and Clímaco, Rethinking, pp. 23–42 and S. McMeekin, The Red Millionaire: a Political Biography of Willy Munzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West (New Haven, Conn., 2003).

⁴⁷ E.g. Avance, 3, 13, 22, 27 July 1934; El Noroeste, 8 July 1934.

⁴⁸ Avance, 23 Feb. 1934.

⁴⁹ A. Shubert, The Road to Revolution in Spain: the Coal Miners of Asturias, 1860–1934 (Urbana, Ill., 1987), p. 152; Avance, 20 Feb. 1934.

⁵⁰ Townson, Crisis, pp. 204, 223–4.

⁵¹ For the Basques, see summary in Townson, Crisis, pp. 253–6. AL, Actas, 7 Oct. 1933 to 16 June 1934, ff. 132–4, 147–8.

⁵² M. Vincent, Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic: Religion and Politics in Salamanca, 1930–1936 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 214–15.

⁵³ 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), p. 280.

⁵⁴ Preston, Coming of the Spanish Civil War, p. 103; Townson, Crisis, p. 204. For examples of pay, see J. M. Macarro Vera, Socialismo, República y revolución en Andalucía (1931–1936) (Seville, 2000), p. 319.

⁵⁵ Macarro Vera, Socialismo, pp. 320–2.

⁵⁶ Avance, 11 Feb. 1934.

⁵⁷ S. Juliá, Madrid, 1931–1934: de la fiesta popular a la lucha de clases (Madrid, 1984), p. 351.

⁵⁸ E. González Calleja, Contrarrevolucionarios: radicalización violenta de las derechas durante la Segunda República, 1931–1936 (Madrid, 2011), pp. 202–5. For a firsthand account, see Tagüeña Lacorte, Testimonio, pp. 42–4.

⁵⁹ Preston, Coming of the Spanish Civil War, p. 103.

⁶⁰ Heraldo de Madrid, 12 Feb. 1934; El Sol, 13 Feb. 1934.

⁶¹ El Socialista, 14 Feb. 1934.

⁶² Avance, 13 Feb. 1934.

⁶³ Avance, 20 Feb. 1934.

⁶⁴ Avance, 21, 22 Feb. 1934; Región, 21 Feb. 1934.

⁶⁵ Avance, 23, 24 Feb. 1934.

⁶⁶ E. González Calleja, En nombre de la autoridad: la defensa del orden público durante la Segunda República española (1931–1936) (Granada, 2014), pp. 204, 224–6 and Cifras, pp. 177–8.

⁶⁷ Townson, Crisis, pp. 222–3.

⁶⁸ R. Salazar Alonso, Bajo el signo de la revolución (Madrid, 1935).

⁶⁹ E.g. in Valencia (Valero, Republicanos, p. 123).

⁷⁰ Avance, 25, 27, 29, 30 March 1934.

⁷¹ Avance, 28 March 1934.

⁷² AL, Actas, 7 Oct. 1933 to 16 June 1934, ff. 141–2.

⁷³ Región, 31 March, 1 Apr. 1934.

⁷⁴ Avance, 3, 4, 5 Apr. 1934; La Voz de Asturias, 3, 4 Apr. 1934.

⁷⁵ Avance, 5, 8 Apr. 1934.

⁷⁶ Avance, 29 March 1934.

⁷⁷ Avance, 28 March 1934.

⁷⁸ In contrast, his counterpart in Valencia negotiated the end of a general strike (Valero, Republicanos, pp. 128–33).

⁷⁹ See A. Rabinbach, The Crisis of Austrian Socialism: from Red Vienna to Civil War, 1927–1934 (Chicago, Ill., 1983) and C. Jeffery, Social Democracy in the Austrian Provinces, 1918–1934: Beyond Red Vienna (London, 1995).

⁸⁰ Horn, European socialists, pp. 21–3.

⁸¹ Avance, 4 Feb. 1934.

⁸² Avance, 24, 27 March 1934.

⁸³ Región, 3 Feb. 1934.

⁸⁴ For the pact, see V. Alba, La Alianza Obrera: historia y análisis de una táctica de unidad en España (Madrid, 1978), pp. 205–6 and the announcement in Avance, 1 Apr. 1934.

⁸⁵ ‘Informe del Comité Regional de la CNT de Asturias sobre su actuación y la de la Alianza Obrera Regional Revolucionaria en los sucesos revolucionarios ocurridos en la provincia de marzo a octubre de 1934’ [undated], CDMH, PS Gijón, J series, box 12, file 2, pp. 12–3.

⁸⁶ Horn, European socialists, pp. 63–6, 138–42, 149–50. For a detailed analysis of the French case, see J. Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–38 (Cambridge, 1988), ch. 1.

⁸⁷ E.g. R. Navarro Comas, ‘El Frente Único, las Alianzas Obreras y el Frente Popular: la evolución teórica de los anarquistas ante la colaboración obrera’, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, xli (2011), 103–20.

⁸⁸ For a summary of his thought, see P. Heywood, Marxism and the Failure of Organised Socialism in Spain, 1879–1936 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 142–3.

⁸⁹ T. Corkett, ‘Interactions between the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and the Unión General de Trabajadores in Spain and Catalonia, 1931–1936’ (Unpublished University of Glasgow PhD thesis, 2011), pp. 45–6. See also A. Durgan, BOC 1930–1936: el Bloque Obrero y Campesino (Barcelona, 1996), chs 3 and 4.

⁹⁰ Durgan, BOC, pp. 243–8; Alba, Alianza, pp. 96–7.

⁹¹ A. Zukas, ‘Explaining unemployed protest in the Ruhr at the end of the Weimar Republic’, in Unemployment and Protest: New Perspectives on Two Centuries of Contention, ed. M. Reiss and M. Perry (Oxford, 2011), p. 165.

⁹² Avance, 6 Feb. 1934. For positive reactions, see Avance, 2, 16 Feb. 1934; El Noroeste, 6 Feb. 1934.

⁹³ Avance, 21 Jan., 9, 14 March 1934; Á. Mato Díaz, La Atenas del norte: ateneos, sociedades culturales y bibliotecas populares en Asturias (1876–1937) (Oviedo, 2008), p. 97.

⁹⁴ Avance, 7 Jan. 1934. The PCE Central Committee also condemned the Pro-United Front Committee (P. Miller, ‘Un movimiento de oposición radical: el PCE en Asturias, 1931– 1934’, Estudios de Historia Social, xxxi (1984), 131–7, at p. 135).

⁹⁵ Avance, 7 Feb. 1934.

⁹⁶ F. Largo Caballero, Escritos sobre la República: notas históricas de la guerra en España (1917–1940) (Madrid, 1985), p. 141.

⁹⁷ E.g. Souto Kustrín, Y ¿Madrid?, p. 82.

⁹⁸ E.g. Avance, 8, 29 July, 19 Aug. 1934; El Noroeste, 25 Aug. 1934.

⁹⁹ Avance, 3, 5 May 1934,

¹⁰⁰ J. Prada Rodríguez, De la agitación republicana a la represión franquista (Ourense 1934– 1939) (Barcelona, 2006), p. 37–8; Macarro Vera, Socialismo, p. 314.

¹⁰¹ ‘Informe del Comité Regional de Asturias de la CNT elevado al Pleno Regional de sindicatos sobre los acontecimientos de octubre de 1934 y otro informe de la Comisión de la Alianza Obrera Regional Revolucionaria remitido al Comité citado’, 10 Apr. 1936, CDMH, PS Gijón, J Series, box 12, file 3, pp. 11, 30–1; Á. Barrio Alonso, Anarquismo y anarcosindicalismo en Asturias (1890–1936) (Madrid, 1988), p. 401; El Noroeste, 20 Sept. 1934.

¹⁰² See ‘Informe del Comité Regional de Asturias de la CNT elevado al Pleno Regional’, pp. 11–14.

¹⁰³ Bizcarrondo shares this view in Octubre del 1934: reflexiones sobre una revolución (Madrid, 1977), p. 40.

¹⁰⁴ Souto Kustrín, Y ¿Madrid?, p. 93.

¹⁰⁵ Shubert, Road, p. 152; P. I. Taibo II, Asturias, octubre 1934 (Barcelona, 2013), pp. 50–1.

¹⁰⁶ El Noroeste, 17 June 1934.

¹⁰⁷ Avance, 26 June 1934; El Noroeste, 27 June 1934.

¹⁰⁸ Avance, 29 July 1934.

¹⁰⁹ F. Cobo Romero, Revolución campesina y contrarrevolución franquista en Andalucía: conflictividad social, violencia política y represión franquista en el mundo rural andaluz, 1931– 1950 (Granada, 2004), pp. 104–14; for Valencia, see Valero, Republicanos, p. 143. For arrests, see González Calleja, Cifras, p. 217.

¹¹⁰ Shubert, Road, p. 151.

¹¹¹ Avance, 27 March, 21 July 1934.

¹¹² Avance, 11 July 1934.

¹¹³ See Rabinbach, ‘Freedom’, p. 34.

¹¹⁴ See photographs in Mundo Gráfico, 27 June 1934 and Avance, 4 Sept. 1934.

¹¹⁵ S. Souto Kustrín, ‘Taking the street: workers’ youth organizations and political conflict in the Spanish Second Republic’, European History Quarterly, xxxiv (2004), 131–56, at p. 143; Renovación, 17 Feb. 1934; A. Neuberg, Armed Insurrection (London, 1970 [1928]).

¹¹⁶ For politics as action, see M. Vincent, ‘Political violence and mass society: a European civil war?’, in The Oxford Handbook of European history, 1914–1945, ed. N. Doumanis (Oxford, 2016), particularly at p. 400.

¹¹⁷ For the Iron Front, see D. Harsch, German Social Democracy and the Rise of Nazism (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1993), ch. 7.

¹¹⁸ H. García, ‘De los soviets a las Cortes: los comunistas ante la República’, in Rey, Palabras, pp. 136, 139; González Calleja, Contrarrevolucionarios, p. 228.

¹¹⁹ Largo Caballero, Escritos, pp. 93–102; S. Souto Kustrín, ‘De la paramilitación al fracaso: las insurrecciones socialistas de 1934 en Viena y Madrid’, Pasado y memoria, ii (2003), 204–5. For the financing of the insurrection, see A. del Rosal, 1934: el movimiento revolucionario de octubre (Madrid, 1984), pp. 229–33.

¹²⁰ See Souto Kustrín’s piecing together of evidence of preparations in Madrid in Y ¿Madrid?, pp. 177–9.

¹²¹ Souto Kustrín, ‘De la paramilitarización al fracaso’, p. 204.

¹²² Avance, 26 Aug. 1934.

¹²³ Rosal, Octubre, pp. 234–40.

¹²⁴ Taibo, Asturias, pp. 80–5.

¹²⁵ D. Siemens emphasizes the empowering nature of paramilitary activities for German men in the context of Nazi Stormtroopers in Stormtroopers: a New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts (New Haven, Conn., 2017), e.g. p. 322.

¹²⁶ González Calleja, En nombre, p. 240; Región, 29 July 1934.

¹²⁷ Avance, 1 Aug. 1934.

¹²⁸ Avance, 14 Aug. 1934; Townson, Crisis, p. 263.

¹²⁹ S. Souto Kustrín, Paso a la juventud: movilización democrática, estalinismo y revolución en la república española (Valencia, 2013), p. 67; Avance, 26, 29 Aug. 1934.

¹³⁰ Avance, 15 Aug. 1934.

¹³¹ Avance, 19 Aug. 1934.

¹³² Avance, 30 Aug. 1934.

¹³³ Avance, 4 Sept. 1934.

¹³⁴ This was announced in Avance (1 Sept. 1934).

¹³⁵ This account is drawn from Avance, 2 Sept. 1934; El Noroeste, 2 Sept. 1934; El Sol, 2 Sept. 1934.

¹³⁶ Avance, 2 Sept. 1934.

¹³⁷ Avance, 2 Sept. 1934.

¹³⁸ Región, 8 Sept. 1934.

¹³⁹ Avance, 4 Sept. 1934.

¹⁴⁰ Avance, 6 Sept. 1934.

¹⁴¹ The politics and memory of Covadonga are analysed in C. Boyd, ‘The second battle of Covadonga: the politics of commemoration in modern Spain’, History and Memory, xiv (2002), 37–64.

¹⁴² Región, 11 Sept. 1934.

¹⁴³ Avance, 11 Sept. 1934; El Sol, 11 Sept. 1934; ABC, 11 Sept. 1934; Salazar Alonso, Bajo, pp. 293–5.

¹⁴⁴ Avance, 11 Sept. 1934.

¹⁴⁵ El Noroeste, 12 Sept. 1934. For a detailed account, see Taibo, Asturias, pp. 111–20.

¹⁴⁶ Avance, 12, 13 Sept. 1934.

¹⁴⁷ El Noroeste, 22 Sept. 1934.

¹⁴⁸ El Noroeste, 19, 26 Sept. 1934; Región, 28 Sept. 1934; Avance, 28 Sept. 1934.

¹⁴⁹ Región, 15 Sept. 1934; S. Noval Suárez, Langreo Rojo: historia del martirio y persecución de los sacerdotes en el Arciprestazgo de Langreo durante los sucesos revolucionarios del año 1934 (La Felguera, 1935), p. 99.

¹⁵⁰ AHPA, AP, box 78436, file 257 (1934).

¹⁵¹ AHPA, AP, box 79435, file 280 (1934).

¹⁵² Avance, 22 Sept. 1934.

¹⁵³ Avance, 25 Sept. 1934.

¹⁵⁴ Preston, Coming of the Spanish Civil War, pp. 123–4.