ABSTRACT
In the widest perspective, the Spanish Left did not view the Asturian rising of 1934 as a defeat. The conviction that Gil Robles had intended to establish fascism in Spain coloured all later leftist judgements of the revolutionary movement. The overall balance, it was felt, had been positive in that Gil Robles had been shown that the peaceful establishment of fascism would not be permitted by the working class. For many on the Left, the words with which Belarmino Tomás had explained the need for surrender to the Asturian miners became symbolic. The surrender was merely ‘a halt on the road’.1 The view that Asturias pointed the way to a revolutionary working-class unity was adopted, with variations, by the Trotskyists, the orthodox Communist Party (the PCE) and the FJS.
