On 4 October 1934 the workers of the Spanish coalmining region of Asturias rose in armed revolt against the government of the Second Republic. This was intended as part of a nationwide rising planned by the Socialist Party (PSOE) to overthrow the right-wing republican government. The aim was to prevent what it saw as the menace of a fascist takeover and then to install a government committed to sweeping social reform. However the socialist rising was incompetently planned and only in Asturias did it materialize. But there the PSOE's limited objectives were immediately exceeded by a radicalized working class which initiated a full-scale social revolution under the banner of the Alianza Obrera, (Workers' Alliance). The Asturian ‘Commune’ lasted two weeks before it was defeated by 26,000 troops from the Spanish army and Foreign Legion. Widespread and vicious repression ensued.

The memory of the Asturian revolution persisted in Spanish politics from October 1934 until the Civil War's outbreak in July 1936. The Popular Front, the vehicle by which the left returned to power in February 1936, was one of its by-products. Yet if the history of the Spanish Popular Front is well known, ironically the Popular Front in Asturias itself has suffered neglect. Such meagre scholarship as has been devoted to it deals exclusively with its political aspects.

My purpose in this essay is to redress the balance and to suggest – the scarcity of sources prevents anything more definite – that the Popular Front in Asturias was more than just a regional expression of a national political alliance.