The mine drills fell silent, the wagons stopped rattling and the
soot-stained faces raised their fists and rifles in the early morning ofOctober 5, 1934, the revolutionary movement in Asturias began. An
unprecedented workers' revolt in Spanish territory that would
drastically determine the beginning of events that not only had
repercussions in that year, but also initiated the revolutionary cycle
that would have its second chapter in the summer of 1936.
For two weeks this Asturian commune took control of town halls and
councils, disarmed the Civil Guard in its barracks and spread the revolt
to the sound of workers' gunpowder, but it would be crushed with the
greatest of harshness by the Republican government, with General
Francisco Franco at the head and the Spanish legionaries. These events
were closely followed on a daily basis due to the testimony of the
revolutionaries themselves and the journalists who narrated the events
in first person, therefore there is a lot of information, even in our
days, to report on their development and repercussions.
This article will describe the revolutionary events that took place in
Asturias in those weeks of October, as well as the necessary prior
material and logistical preparations; and the repression by the
radical-Cedista republican government and the military. In a second
article, the strategy of the workers' alliance, the organization of the
local revolutionary committees and the consequences of the brutal
reprisals against the workers' movement will be politically analyzed.
Towards the revolutionary outbreak and the Asturian insurrectional strike.
The revolutionaries had been carefully preparing the insurrectional
strike for some time. They expropriated weapons with their own means
from the factories in Oviedo and Trubia, bought them from smugglers and,
thanks to an organised network, even had them delivered from the arms
factories in Eibar in the Basque Country through the Transport Union of
the UGT in Oviedo. Meanwhile, the dynamite was obtained directly from
the mining basins by the workers themselves who had access to it. All
these weapons were hidden in more than a dozen clandestine depots of the
political organisations that formed part of the Workers' Alliance, a
unitary body that would form the backbone of the revolutionary movement,
formed under the Union of Proletarian Brothers, particularly in Asturias
by the PSOE-UGT, Communist Party, and also integrated into the Asturian
Regional CNT.
However, a few weeks before the insurrection, on the night of September
11, the Civil Guard seized a cache of weapons from the ship "Turquesa"
in the coastal town of Muros de Nalón. This merchant ship transported
weapons and ammunition, bringing them to the coast first in small boats
where they were loaded onto vans belonging to the Provincial Council of
Oviedo in the early hours of the morning. However, one of these vans
broke down and was discovered by the repressive forces, who arrested and
interrogated several miners and socialist leaders. In addition, three
important weapons depots were discovered in Madrid in September 1934,
stored in the Casa del Pueblo, in the Ciudad Universitaria and in Cuatro
Caminos. These events were investigated judicially, the Civil Government
attempted to impose the dismissal of all the socialist town councils in
Asturias, and the right-wing press also heated up the political climate
until, on 22 September 1934, the Council of Ministers authorized the
head of the Government to declare a state of alarm.
The militant forces of the workers' movement, therefore, had already
been preparing themselves and even carrying out training in excursions,
cultural clubs or country pilgrimages; the socialist and libertarian
youth had prepared themselves as organised combatants capable of
sustaining a revolutionary uprising. Throughout the spring and summer of
1934, six general strikes were called in the Asturian region, mainly in
the mining basins. Some of them had a clearly political and not
labour-related character, such as the one organised in solidarity with
the Austrian socialists brutally crushed by the dictatorship of the
nationalist Dolfuss, also in solidarity with the continued seizure that
summer of the editions of the socialist newspaper «Avance», directed by
Javier Bueno, who was later arrested and tortured in October. On 9
September, a strike and day of struggle was also called in protest
against the concentration of the CEDA and its right-wing leader José
María Gil Robles in the sanctuary of Covadonga.
This entire political climate from the organizations with an acquired
revolutionary commitment indicated that a unity of rhythms, structures
and a workers' movement with sufficient insurgent potential was being
achieved and that it would explode with the call for a general strike
during the early hours of October 5, 1934 and the declaration of a state
of governmental war as an immediate response.
The mining basins begin the revolution: this was storming the heavens.
The miners of the Caudal basin, with its municipal capital in Mieres,
and in the Nalón basin with its nerve centre in Sama de Langreo, went
into action, taking over dozens of Civil Guard posts in coordinated
assaults in the largest offensive against this repressive body in its
history. To do so, the revolutionaries had not only the previous
preparation already mentioned, but also an indispensable combat strategy
to confront the military forces and the Civil Guard, forming workers'
militias with clear objectives. Street fighting also took different
forms in the city or in small rural and mining towns; having to overcome
military procedures, whether by ingenuity, creativity or superiority,
leading to revolutionary military victory.
The organization of these forces corresponds to these militias in
political connection with the Local Revolutionary Committee, which knew
perfectly well the characteristics, for example, of the civil guards of
the garrison in each town. The initial armament was used to try to get
more weapons confiscated from the repressive forces that were
deactivated and reaching arsenals in different military points.
Likewise, the seizure of automobiles that were armored to surround and
make offensives by installing steel plates that could deflect bullets
became very important. It was about putting into practice a defensive
and offensive tactic at both levels when the situation required it, and
that its effective and real value would only be sustained by the
collective and individual conscience, and an organization of councils
behind that would politically and economically articulate this entire
revolutionary movement.
The first shots of the revolutionary movement reached the outskirts of
Oviedo the following day, where the victory of the workers' militias in
Manzaneda was proclaimed against an infantry battalion and a section of
the Republican Assault Guard, both sent from the Asturian capital to
Mieres. However, the city of Oviedo could not be taken initially due to
a technical error at the time of the power cut that should have occurred
in order for the militias to rise up inside, so the Army and the Civil
Guard had time to prepare the defences at strategic points. The miners'
columns also entered the city from the Paniceres neighbourhood and the
Salvador cemetery, where hundreds of revolutionaries had been gathering
and advancing in a coordinated manner to the sound of rocket fire.
Street fighting gradually began with great momentum and with the
throwing of dynamite against the defending troops; The neighbourhoods
and some hills of the city were quickly taken, the town hall of Oviedo,
the carabinieri barracks and the railway station were taken, but above
all the Civil Guard barracks and the arms factory were taken between the
8th and 9th of October. The military barracks of Pelayo and Santa Clara
were surrounded with a thousand soldiers inside, and awaited the arrival
of reinforcements to support them against the workers' force. The
Treasury Delegation, the Santo Domingo convent and the Episcopal palace
were burned during those days, and the main cash register of the Bank of
Spain was blown up with dynamite. On the 11th of October military planes
bombed insurgent areas and strategic points to open the way for the
column of the military man López Ochoa who came from Avilés, the first
to try to enter the city of Oviedo, almost entirely taken by the
Asturian revolutionaries.
In Gijón, the insurrectionary movement was limited by the initial lack
of arms and ammunition. These were distributed among very specific
organized groups of workers who fired on the prison and the Coto
barracks, while setting up barricades in the popular neighborhoods of
the city. Their most notable tactical actions took place in the port
after attacking the cruiser "Libertad" with a battalion of the infantry
regiment. The armed groups from Gijón, supported by CNT miners and an
armored vehicle sent from La Felguera, fought these forces for three
days to prevent them from making their way to the capital of Oviedo.
From the moment it arrived at the port of Gijón, the cruiser opened
cannon fire mainly on the popular neighborhood of Cimadevilla,
destroying numerous working-class houses. In Avilés, the revolt began a
day late, and the most notable action was the sinking of the ship
"Agadir" at the mouth of the port itself. preventing government
reinforcements from landing before the arrival of General López Ochoa's
column. The main union and worker leaders organised a political
structure through the Asturian Revolutionary Committee and a military
leadership of operations to confront the government's response.
Within a few days, the rest of the Asturian territory was under the
control of an armed workers' militia made up of almost 30,000 active
members who organised revolutionary committees in the town councils or
prepared defences and assaults on other barracks. In Trubia, where one
of the main arms factories was located, the workers acted quickly and
decisively to subdue the civil guards and the military garrison guarding
the factory. In Grado, the town hall was taken after some fighting with
the military garrison, and the red flag was raised, organising a
revolutionary committee and defending the hills around the town.
Military repression: from the days of Red October to the black smoke of
the ruins.
The Republican government adopted immediate repressive measures,
treating the revolt as a war, which in reality was what it was intended
to become: a total war against capitalism and against the incipient
fascism in Spain. Gil Robles, the right-wing leader of the CEDA,
requested the intervention of Generals Franco and Goded, who had
participated in the repression of the General Strike of 1917, also in
Asturias. They recommended sending troops from the Legion and Regulars
from Morocco; also sending the cruiser "Almirante Cervera" and the
battleship "Jaime I", that is, the elite soldiers to repress the miners.
The Minister of War, the Lerrouxist Diego Hidalgo, justified the use of
non-peninsular repressive forces because they were the only Spanish
military forces that had entered into combat in Africa, however, the aim
was to avoid deaths of peninsular soldiers and they found in the African
Regulars the best cannon fodder against the Asturian workers to loot,
murder and subdue the population.
Several columns of military troops were deployed throughout Asturias on
four different fronts. The first came from the south on October 5th,
crossing the Pajares pass, led first by General Bosch and later by
General Balmes. The miners organised resistance from Mieres. In the
towns of Vega del Rey and Campomanes, the workers' militias halted this
advance until October 10th, but they managed to break through the mining
defences with the use of artillery and besieged the Caudal basin. This
is where the bloodiest clashes took place, and numerous revolutionaries
lost their lives, not only from the artillery, but also from the
incendiary bombs that the air force dropped on the town of Mieres before
taking it. The northern front was centred on Gijón and, in opposition to
the initial workers' resistance, Lieutenant Colonel Yagüe, together with
legionaries and Regulars, advanced towards Oviedo, in the same way as
López Ochoa had done from Galicia, advancing on Avilés, and the eastern
column from Santander with Colonel Solgacha, who found resistance in La
Felguera, an important nucleus controlled by the CNT miners. On 11
October the Revolutionary Committee in Oviedo was dissolved and the
majority of revolutionaries retreated to the mining basins, although the
last workers' resistance would hold out in the capital for two more
days, mainly firing from elevated positions and from working-class
neighbourhoods.
López Ochoa went to the mining areas to sign the surrender of the new
Revolutionary Committee that had been created in Sama de Langreo, while
Franco, Yagüe, or Gil Robles from Madrid, advocated brutal repression
taking advantage of the deployment of 18 thousand soldiers to crush the
revolution. The trade unionist Belarmino Tomás was in charge of the
negotiations in which he guaranteed the delivery of weapons and military
or civilian prisoners in exchange for the mining areas not being
occupied by the Moroccan Regulars to avoid the particular bloodshed and
repression highlighted in this body. The members of the Revolutionary
Committee would not surrender, although many would be arrested anyway,
others instead chose to surrender or flee to the mountains hiding their
weapons. From October 18, 1934, a fierce repression would be unleashed
that would lead to the near dismantling of the organized labor movement
in the mining areas with thousands of revolutionary prisoners scattered
throughout the country.
Angel, Liza activist.
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2024/10/08/la-mecha-del-octubre-rojo-de-los-mineros/
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