Asturian miners' strike of 1934

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Asturian miners' strike of 1934
Part of the
Guardia Civil police forces during the Asturian insurrection
Date4–19 October 1934
Location
Asturias
, Spain
Caused byAsturian miners strike
Resulted inStrike suppressed
Parties

Asturian Workers Alliance

Lead figures
Casualties and losses
1,700 dead
15,000–30,000 captured
260 dead

The Asturian miners' strike of 1934 was a major

Spanish Morocco.[6]

The war minister, Diego Hidalgo wanted Francisco Franco to lead the troops against the rebellion but Spain's president, Alcalá Zamora, opted to send general Eduardo López Ochoa to Asturias to lead the government forces in an effort to limit the bloodshed.[7][8] Soldiers from the Civil Guard, colonial troops, and the Spanish Legion were dispatched under López Ochoa and Colonel Juan Yagüe to relieve the besieged government garrisons and to retake the towns from the miners. The brevity of the confrontation led historian Gabriel Jackson to observe

"every form of fanaticism and cruelty which was to characterise the Civil War occurred during the October revolution and its aftermath: utopian revolution marred by sporadic red terror; systematically bloody repression by the ‘forces of order’; confusion and demoralisation of the moderate left; fanatical vengefulness on the part of the right."[9]

The revolt has been regarded as "the first battle of" or "the prelude to" the Spanish Civil War.[8] According to hispanist Edward Malefakis, the Spanish left had rejected "legal processes of government" and revolted against the possibility of a right-led coalition, even though they would later use the "legality" argument to condemn the July 1936 coup was against an elected government.[10] Historian Salvador de Madariaga, a supporter of Manuel Azaña, and an exiled vocal opponent of Francisco Franco asserted that:

"The uprising of 1934 is unforgivable. The argument that [the conservatives] tried to destroy the Constitution to establish fascism was, at once, hypocritical and false. [With the rebellion], the Spanish left was without even the shadow of moral authority to condemn the rebellion of 1936".[11][note 1]

Political background

The majority vote in the

1933 elections was won by the conservative Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA). President Alcalá-Zamora declined to invite its leader, Gil Robles, to form a government. Instead he invited the Radical Republican Party's Alejandro Lerroux to do so. Despite receiving the most votes, CEDA was denied cabinet positions for nearly a year.[12] After a year of political pressure, CEDA, the largest party in the congress, was finally successful in forcing the acceptance of three ministries. However the entrance of CEDA in the government, although being normal in a parliamentary democracy, was not well accepted by the left. When the plans to invite members of the right-wing CEDA into government were leaked and the political left was distraught.[13] The left tried to reach a common formula of protest but were hampered because the formation of a new government was the result of a normal parliamentary process and that the parties coming to government had won the previous year's free elections. The issue was that the Left identified the Republic not with democracy or constitutional law but a specific set of policies and politicians, and any deviation was seen as treasonous.[14] That triggered revolutionary strikes and uprisings occurred in Asturias and in Catalonia as well as small incidents in other places in Spain, all a part of the Revolution of 1934
.

On the other hand, CEDA could hardly be seen as a democratic force. It called for the revision of the republican constitution, with the aim to create a new regime and defend "Christian civilization" from leftism and Marxism.[15] Its leader, José María Gil-Robles, declared his intention to "give Spain a true unity, a new spirit, a totalitarian polity..." and went on to say "Democracy is not an end but a mean to achieve the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it."[16] The CEDA held fascist-style rallies, called Gil-Robles "Jefe", the equivalent of Duce, and claimed that the CEDA might lead a "March on Madrid" (similar to the Italian Fascist March on Rome) to forcefully seize power.[17] The fact that this force won a relative majority in the congress, made many republicans fear a return to the monarchy or a dictatorship like that of Primo de Rivera, and hardened the most radical left in its belief that a fascist danger was rising and a revolution necessary.

Preparations

The rebels had stockpiled rifles and pistols, leading to general

communist factions in Spain had called general strikes. However, the strikes immediately exposed differences on the left between the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE)-linked Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), which organised the strike, and the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT).[21]
As a result, the strikes failed in much of the country.

Strike and rising

Location of Asturias in Spain

In several

Mieres and Sama, 58 religious buildings including churches, convents and part of the university at Oviedo were burned and destroyed.[24][25]

The same day, large groups of miners advanced along the road to Oviedo, the provincial capital. With the exception of two barracks in which fighting with the garrison of 1,500 government troops continued, the city was taken by 6 October. The miners proceeded to occupy several other towns, most notably the large industrial centre of La Felguera, and set up town assemblies, or "revolutionary committees", to govern the towns that they controlled.[24]

Taking Oviedo, the rebels were able to seize the city's arsenal gaining 24,000 rifles, carbines and light and heavy machine guns.

Mieres and Sama.[24]

Government response

The government in Madrid was now facing a civil war and called on two of its senior generals,

Hugh Thomas asserts that Hidalgo said that he did not want young inexperienced recruits fighting their own people and he was wary of moving troops to Asturias leaving the rest of Spain unprotected. In 1932, Manuel Azaña had also called the Tercio and the regulares
(colonial troops) from North Africa to join in the suppression.

The war minister, Diego Hidalgo, wanted Franco to lead the troops but President Alcalá Zamora selected General López Ochoa, a Republican, to lead the government forces in order to minimize possible bloodshed.[7] Soldiers from the civil guards, Moroccan Regulares and the Spanish Legion were accordingly organized under General Eduardo López Ochoa and Colonel Juan de Yagüe to relieve the besieged government garrisons and to retake the towns from the miners. During the operations, an autogyro made a reconnaissance flight for the government troops in what was the first military employment of a rotorcraft.[27]

Repression

On October 7, delegates from the anarchist-controlled seaport towns of Gijón and Avilés arrived in Oviedo to request weapons to defend against a landing of government troops. Ignored by the socialist UGT-controlled committee, the delegates returned to their town empty-handed, and government troops met little resistance as they recaptured Gijón and Avilés the following day.[28] On the same day, the cruiser Libertad and two gunboats reached Gijón, where they fired on the workers at the shore. Bombers also attacked coalfields and Oviedo.[18] After two weeks of heavy fighting (and a death toll estimated between 1,200 and 2,000), the rebellion was suppressed. General López Ochoa ordered the summary executions of six legionnaires and Moroccan colonial troops for raping, torturing, and murdering prisoners, some of whom had been hacked to death.[29] Historian Javier Tusell argues that although Franco had a leading role, giving instructions from Madrid, that does not mean he took part in the illegal repressive activities.[30] According to Tussell it was López de Óchoa, a republican freemason who had been appointed by President Zamora to lead the repression in the field, who was unable to limit bloodshed.[30]

Aftermath

In the days following the strike, Spain's prime minister, Lerroux, was widely seen as the country's "savior". In turn, groups of socialists, anarchists and communists put forth a variety of propaganda justifying the rebellion and representing the suppressing as a martyrdom.

Hugh Thomas, 2,000 people died in the uprising: 230-260 military and police, 33 priests, 1,500 miners in combat and 200 individuals killed in the repression. Among those killed, journalist Luis de Sirval was a well-known opponent of tortures and executions, eventually being arrested and killed by three officers of the Legion.[33] Stanley Payne, an American historian, estimates that the rebel's armed conflict killed between 50 and 100 people and that the government conducted up to 100 summary executions, while 15 million pesetas were stolen from banks, most of which was never recovered and would go on to fund further revolutionary activity.[8]

Due to

Spanish Civil War González Peña went to exile in Mexico, where he died on 27 July 1952.[44]

Franco was convinced that the workers' uprising had been "carefully prepared by the agents of Moscow", informed by material he gathered from the Entente Anticommuniste of Geneva. Historian

anti-Semitic terms as the tools of a foreign Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy.[47] Franco believed the government needed to reprimand the rebels, otherwise it would only encourage further revolutionary activity.[48]

Civil War

Historians have often regarded Asturias as the "first battle" or "prelude" of the Spanish Civil War.[49] The left's leaders would never publicly admit to wrong-doing in the turn to mass violence in Asturias, though they would accept that they could not use such methods to obtain power in the immediate future.[50] The suppression of the Asturias rebellion re-enforced political backing between the Republican right and the national army, a dynamic described by Calvo Sotelo as "the backbone of the Fatherland."[51] When the Popular Front was formed in 1936, one of its proposals was to free all those who were imprisoned for taking part in the Asturias rebellion; this proposal angered the Spanish right, who regarded freeing those who had violently revolted against the legally elected government as an indicator that the Spanish left would not respect constitutional government and the rule of law.[18]

At the outbreak of the

violence occurring throughout Madrid, the government attempted to move Ochoa from the hospital to a safer location but was twice prevented from doing so by large hostile crowds. A third attempt was made under the pretence that Ochoa was already dead, but the ruse was exposed and the general was taken away. Paul Preston states that an anarchist dragged him from the coffin in which he was lying and shot him in the hospital garden. His head was hacked off, stuck on a pole and publicly paraded. His remains were then displayed with a sign reading "This is the butcher of Asturias."[52][29]

The eight martyrs of Turon were venerated on 7 September 1989, and beatified by Pope John Paul II.[53]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ In the original: “El alzamiento de 1934 es imperdonable. La decisión del presidente de la República de llamar al poder a la CEDA era inatacable y hasta debida desde hacía ya tiempo. El argumento de que el señor Gil Robles intentaba destruir la Constitución para instaurar el fascismo era, a la vez, hipócrita y falso. ….. Con la rebelión de 1934, la izquierda española perdió hasta la sombra de autoridad para condenar la rebelión de 1936."

References

  1. ^ Jerez-Farran & Amago 2010, p. 61.
  2. ^ Hayes 1951, p. 96.
  3. ^ Orella Martínez & Mizerska-Wrotkowska 2015.
  4. ^ Thomas 2001, pp. 131–132.
  5. ^ a b Payne 2004, p. 55.
  6. ^ Ealham 2005, p. 54.
  7. ^ a b Hodges 2002.
  8. ^ a b c Payne & Palacios 2014, p. 90.
  9. ^ Jackson 1972, p. 167.
  10. ISBN 978-0-300-13080-5
    . The revolution of October is the immediate origin of the Civil War. the left, above all the Socialists, had rejected legal processes of government; the government against which they revolted was electorally justified. The left was later to make great play of the 'legality' argument to condemn the generals' revolt in July 1936 against an elected government.
  11. ^ Madariaga - Spain (1964) p.416
  12. ^ Payne & Palacios 2014, pp. 86–88.
  13. ^ Payne 2006, pp. 82–83.
  14. ^ Payne 2006, pp. 84–85.
  15. ^ Paul Preston. The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution & Revenge. 3rd edition. W. W. New York, New York, USA: Norton & Company, Inc, 2007. 2006 Pp. 62
  16. ^ Preston (2006). p. 64
  17. ^ Preston (2006). p. 49, 59
  18. ^ a b c d e Beevor 2006, pp. 19–39.
  19. ^ Payne 2006, pp. 85–86.
  20. ^ Spain 1833-2002, p.133, Mary Vincent, Oxford, 2007
  21. ISBN 978-84-306-0924-6
    .
  22. ^ Jackson 1987, pp. 154–155.
  23. ^ "Cirilo Bertrán and 8 Companions, religious of the Institute of Brothers of the Christian Schools and Inocencio de la Inmaculada, priest of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, martyrs (+1934, +1937)". Holly See. Vatican News. Nov 21, 1999.
  24. ^ a b c d Thomas 1977.
  25. ^ Cueva 1998, pp. 355–369.
  26. ^ Álvarez 2011.
  27. ^ Payne 1993, p. 219.
  28. ^ Jackson 1987, p. 157.
  29. ^ a b Preston 2012, p. 269.
  30. ^ a b Tusell 1992, p. 19.
  31. ^ Hayes 1951.
  32. ^ Jackson 1972, p. 161.
  33. ^ a b Thomas 2001, p. 136.
  34. ^ Beevor 2006, p. 32.
  35. ^ Beevor 2006, pp. 31–32.
  36. ^ Jackson 1972, pp. 159–160.
  37. ^ Payne 1999, p. 228.
  38. ^ Payne & Palacios 2014, p. 91.
  39. ^ a b Payne 2006, pp. 100–103.
  40. ^ Graham 2005, p. 16.
  41. ^ Jackson 1972, p. 160.
  42. ^ Goethem, Geert van. The Amsterdam International: The World of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), 1913-1945. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. p. 76
  43. ^ Kraus, Dorothy, and Henry Kraus. The Gothic Choirstalls of Spain. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. p. 37
  44. ^ "González Peña, Ramón" (in Spanish). Fundación Pablo Iglesias. 21 February 2012. Retrieved 7 April 2015.
  45. ^ Jerez-Farran & Amago 2010, pp. 61–62.
  46. ^ Jerez-Farran & Amago 2010, p. 62.
  47. ISBN 978-1-5275-2014-1
    .
  48. ^ Payne & Palacios 2014, p. 92.
  49. ^ Payne 2006, p. 93.
  50. ^ Payne 2006, pp. 93–95.
  51. ^ Casanova 2010, p. 112.
  52. ^ Ruiz 2015, p. 158.
  53. ISBN 978-0-8223-8956-9
    .

Bibliography

Further reading

External links
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