The climax of the Siege of Oviedo occurred between 5 and 12 October 1936, a week of relentless, high-stakes combat where Republican forces shattered the city’s outer defences and pushed the Nationalists back to the brink of total collapse A powerful Nationalist relief column from Galicia was advancing quickly, narrowing the distance to Oviedo to just 15 miles. Driven by the urgent mandate of Socialist miner leader Belarmino Tomás to take the city at all costs, the Republicans launched their final, massive offensive on 4 October. Ccapturing Oviedo would provide a massive morale boost to offset the Republican loss of Toledo, secure the vital Asturian coalfields before winter, and free up thousands of militiamen to pivot toward Madrid.
Over the course of this single, bloody week, the Republican forces systematically compressed and broke through Oviedo’s defensive ring. Utilising their expert knowledge of industrial explosives, the Asturian miners literally blasted their way into the city. Republican forces leveraged Renault FT-17 tanks and improvised armoured fighting vehicles to push through key choke points. Nationalists attempted to defend the main thoroughfares with their few home-grown Trubia tanks, but mechanical failures and intense fighting quickly disabled them.
The fighting raged heavily in peripheral areas like La Argañosa, a strategic railway worker district near the North Station. One by one, Aranda’s outer strong points fell, forcing the remaining Nationalist forces to abandon the perimeter and retreat toward the tight urban core. The fighting transformed into a house-to-house, room-to-room meatgrinder. Rather than advancing through the exposed, swept streets, Republican miners cut holes through the adjoining walls of residential buildings, advancing hidden from open fire. Every house held by Nationalist defenders had to be systematically undermined with dynamite before the attackers could advance.
By the end of this chaotic week, Colonel Aranda’s forces were compressed into the direct center of the city, near the towering Oviedo Cathedral. The siege had severely taken its toll; the city had been stripped of clean water, electricity, and food, causing a deadly outbreak of typhoid. The Nationalists had lost over half of their effective defenders, and by 12 October, they had depleted 90% of their ammunition. Machine gun rounds were entirely exhausted, reducing the conflict to desperate hand-to-hand combat. The garrison was saved from total annihilation only when Nationalist aircraft successfully dropped 30,000 rounds of ammunition directly into the city centre.
Geographically, Oviedo was historically considered a nightmare to defend because the city is nestled in a natural bowl, completely surrounded on all sides by heights and steep slopes. Rather than viewing this topography as a trap, Colonel Antonio Aranda used his extensive background as a brilliant staff officer, and later, head of the Royal Geographical Society, to flip this vulnerability into a lethal asset on his defensive maps. Aranda’s strategy for his “curtain of fire” relied on novel, firepower-centric tactics designed to compensate for his tiny force of 3,000 defenders fighting against 10,000 Republican attackers.
Aranda divided his maps into five distinct defensive sectors spanning a nine-mile perimeter around the city. His “curtain of fire” relied on three core principles. Before the Republican encirclement could lock tight, Aranda pushed his limited troops outward to secure the crests of the highest surrounding hills. By holding the high ground, his spotters retained an uninterrupted, 360-degree visual panorama of every valley, road, and railway line leading into Oviedo. His maps were marked with strict overlapping arcs of visibility, ensuring that no Republican movement could approach undetected.
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The cornerstone of the curtain was tactical firepower. Aranda discovered a massive, forgotten stockpile of weapons and over one million rounds of ammunition left behind by the central government after the 1934 Asturian miner revolt. On his sector maps, Aranda plotted the exact geometric placement of over 100 Hotchkiss machine guns. Instead of firing blindly forward, these heavy weapons were specifically positioned on the lower slopes and peripheral suburban buildings to fire flank-to-flank. Their trajectories were calculated on Aranda’s charts to intersect, creating a literal, continuous curtain of intersecting lead that clipped anyone trying to cross the open valleys or suburban streets.
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From the hilltops, Nationalist artillery officers meticulously pre-registered the coordinates of key geographic choke points, such as the railway lines at La Argañosa and the crossroads near the North Station. These coordinates were hard-coded onto Aranda’s master maps. When Republican infantry waves surged forward, Nationalist forward observers on the hills did not need to spend time calculating trajectories; they simply relayed the map grid square back to the batteries, which immediately unleashed highly accurate, pre-calculated barrages.
The Fatal Flaw in the Topology Aranda’s tactical map was brilliant, but it possessed one major vulnerability: manpower. With only 3,000 men, he simply did not have enough soldiers to securely occupy every single hilltop along the nine-mile perimeter. This allowed the Republican militias to seize several critical heights, most notably Mount Naranco, which loomed directly over the city. From the peak of Naranco, Republican forces set up their own artillery batteries, reversing Aranda’s advantage by raining devastating plunging fire directly down onto the Nationalist barracks, the Teatro Campoamor, and eventually the Cathedral square below.
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The onslaught began on 5 October with a roar of Republican artillery battering the outer crust of the city. Roughly eight thousand Republican assault troops surged forward in waves, focusing their momentum on the western and north- western edges of Oviedo. These conventional infantry assaults, heavily supported by artillery, successfully breached the outermost civilian outposts. The movement forced Nationalist outposts into a cautious, fighting retreat, inflicting the first major structural fractures upon the outer defensive ring. The offensive ignited on the westernmost fringes of the city in the industrial railway district of La Argañosa. Waves of Republican miners breached the outermost railway employee housing estates along the tracks leading toward the Estación del Norte (North Station). Nationalist defenders had heavily sandbagged the railway depots, converting them into ad-hoc blockhouses. Republican artillery heavily bombarded these concrete outposts all day, initiating a slow, fighting retreat by the Nationalists backward along the tracks and into the dense network of peripheral stone buildings.
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By 6 October, the battle rapidly transitioned from the open fields of the suburbs into tactical, street-level infrastructure warfare. Mechanised skirmishes and intense firefights centred on transportation hubs as Republican forces utilised Renault FT-17 tanks to apply pressure. Republicans captured the high ground overlooking the Estación del Norte, or North Station. Combat solidified directly within the infrastructure of the Estación del Norte as Republican forces advanced along Calle Uría, the city’s grand architectural spine connecting the station to the municipal core. Utilising Renault FT-17 light tanks to provide direct cover down the exposed avenue, the attackers suppressed Nationalist sniper positions embedded in the upper-story windows of adjacent apartments. By evening, Republican infantry secured the high-ground embankments overlooking the station platforms, effectively cutting off Aranda’s forces from the city’s northern railway exits. Stripped of high-ground visibility, Aranda’s men abandoned the railway network and fell back to intermediate urban strongpoints, while heavy aerial bombardment by Republican planes began systematically flattening fortified buildings ahead of the infantry advance.
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The following day, 7 October, marked the moment Oviedo’s inner defensive perimeter completely shattered. The Asturian miners introduced their terrifying signature weapon, their industrial dynamite. In a massive, destructive demolition campaign involving all ten thousand Republican troops, attackers used mechanical catapults to hurl sticks of dynamite directly into stone structures. They breached the urban core and seized seventeen key defensive buildings in a single afternoon. Nationalist casualties spiked severely as multiple perimeter squads were entirely cut off, surrounded, and overrun in their strongpoints. This was the day the inner defensive perimeter dissolved. The fighting concentrated on the north-western worker barrios and the outer rim of the San Lázaro district. Confronted by fortified, multi-story brick blocks, Asturian miners deployed custom-built mechanical catapults to fling crates of industrial dynamite directly through building windows. The destruction of these buildings left the Nationalist Santa Clara Barracks completely exposed to direct, open fire.
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On 8 October, the battle turned into a complex maze of micro-sieges within the city itself. Through house-to-house clearing and close-range barricade fights, Republican columns bypassed isolated pocket resistance to achieve a broader tactical goal. The tactical focus shifted squarely to the Santa Clara Barracks, the headquarters of the Assault Guard located just behind the Teatro Campoamor. Republican miners fully surrounded the massive stone complex, cutting its telephone lines and physical communication routes to the city centre. Inside the barracks, Nationalists faced a relentless hail of improvised dynamite bombs lobbed over the courtyard walls. Rather than launching a costly frontal assault across the open plaza, Republican units systematically isolated the building, leaving its garrison trapped and unable to reinforce other sectors. They successfully cut the lines of communication and supply between the outer urban rim and the main Nationalist military barracks. This movement fractured the Nationalist defenders into isolated commands, leaving them unable to coordinate their fire.
- Barcelona, Catalonia
The assassination of Josep Prunés Amorós on 5 October 1936 is an example of the score-settling and revolutionary repression that gripped the Republican rearguard in Catalonia during the early months of the Spanish Civil War. His kidnapping and subsequent murder span three specific locations on the outskirts of Barcelona – Vallvidrera, La Floresta, and Montcada i Reixac. The targeting of Prunés was deeply rooted in his past as an agent of state authority and his vocal political animosities.
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Josep Prunés Amorós, a native of Viladecavalls born in 1885, was a veteran officer of the Mossos d’Esquadra (the Catalan autonomous police force), having joined the corps in 1909. Over his long career, Prunés established a reputation as a hardline enforcer of public order, particularly targeting left-wing and anarchist labor organisers. Early in his career, he was stationed in Montcada i Reixac, where he became heavily involved in the suppression and pursuit of anarcho-syndicalists. By 1930, while serving as a corporal in Sant Cugat, his aggressive handling of local unrest, specifically a riot during a football match, made him so deeply loathed that the local population staged an open mutiny against him.
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Following his forced transfers to Cornellà, La Floresta, and finally Vallvidrera, Prunés sealed his fate following the failed right-wing uprising of October 1934. In front of his fellow officers, he allegedly made an arrogant boast, stating that he would happily volunteer for the firing squad tasked with executing the prominent pro-Catalan Republic commander Enric Pérez i Farràs. When the Spanish Civil War erupted in July 1936, the collapse of central state control allowed radical anarcho-syndicalist committees, such as the CSTC and FAI militias, to take control of the streets of Barcelona. Old records were unearthed, and figures associated with past anti-union repression became immediate targets. On 5 October 1936, a militia squad tracking down historical enemies arrived at Prunés’s deployment zone in the mountain neighbourhood of Vallvidrera, overlooking Barcelona.Prunés was forcefully detained by a Republican execution squad, operating under the chaotic umbrella of rearguard repression. He was transported across the Collserola mountain range, bypassing La Floresta, where he had previously been stationed, before being taken to the killing grounds of Montcada i Reixac.
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Montcada i Reixac housed one of the most infamous cemeteries of the Republican rearguard, where the local anarchist committee systematically executed suspected fascists, priests, and hated authority figures. Prunés was summary executed by a firing squad, bringing his career full circle to the very town where he had first gained notoriety for chasing syndicalists decades prior.
- Sierra de Gredos, Ávila
Following the Nationalist military coup of July 1936, the southern valleys of the Sierra de Gredos in Ávila were rapidly captured by rebel forces. In many small agrarian towns like Poyales del Hoyo, local Falangist squads and right-wing authorities initiated systematic repression targeting left-wing mayors, union members, municipal workers, or anyone associated with the reforms of the Second Spanish Republic. On 5 October 1936, these seven individuals were rounded up by a paramilitary squad under the pretext of being transferred to the nearby larger hub of Candeleda for questioning or processing. Instead, they were taken to an isolated roadside location on the route and summarily executed.
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The victims were shot and hastily buried in a mass grave at a site colloquially known as La Cuesta del Avión located within the municipal boundaries of Candeleda. The location derived its name from an old aviation landmark or incident in the area. For decades, their deaths were recorded in official local archives with euphemistic or highly politicised Francoist bureaucratic phrasing, attributing the cause of death to the pasada guerra de liberación (the past war of liberation).
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The seven murdered in this specific event represented multiple generations of families from Poyales del Hoyo, including Tomasa de la Peña García, a local woman targeted in the political sweeps, and her son Benjamín Gómez de la Peña. Also killed were Ceferino Gómez Díaz, Francisco Martín Vélez, Régulo Martín Plaza, Tomás Retamal Sánchez, and Emilio García Hornillos The grave at La Cuesta del Avión became a focal point for the modern historical memory movement in Spain. The ARMH (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica / Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory) found of its existence came through the testimony of a shepherd who had witnessed the burial of the victims when he was 12 years old. Coupled with wartime death certificates kept in the Candeleda municipal archives, the date was found to be 5 October 1936. All in the fosa were recovered and identified in 2010 amid extremely headed opinions on the topic of digging up victims, which has resulted in many graves in the province going unregistered, but there seven were returned to their families
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- La Barranca, Logrono La Rioja
The early autumn of 1936 marked the most lethal phase of the Nationalist White Terror in La Rioja, a region that fell completely to the rebel forces almost immediately after the July coup. Because there was no active military frontline in the province, the violence was entirely a campaign of rearguard purification targeted at civilians, unionists, and democratically elected municipal officials. The primary location for executions shifted from ad-hoc roadside ditches to a centralised, purpose-built execution site known as La Barranca, located in the Dehesa Almida ravine within the Lardero district just south of Logroño. Between September and December 1936, over 400 people were methodically shot by firing squads and buried there in long trenches.
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The first week of October 1936 witnessed an intense escalation across this network of terror. The month opened with a systemic clearing out of the Provincial Prison of Logroño. Nationalist authorities, backed by local Falangist squads, relied heavily on sacas. Instead of being freed from prison, detainees were loaded onto trucks in the dead of night, driven to the outskirts of Logroño or the walls of the local cemetery, and summarily executed.
The first week of October 1936 witnessed an intense escalation across this network of terror. The month opened with a systemic clearing out of the Provincial Prison of Logroño. Nationalist authorities, backed by local Falangist squads, relied heavily on sacas. Instead of being freed from prison, detainees were loaded onto trucks in the dead of night, driven to the outskirts of Logroño or the walls of the local cemetery, and summarily executed.
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In the municipality of Ausejo, a paramilitary squad executed four local men and buried them in an agrarian mass grave known as the El Alfalfal fosa. The victims targeted in this localised sweep on 3 October were José María Benito Martínez, Carmelo Quiñones Díaz, Bernabé Hernández Elizande, and Rufo González Sáenz. On the same day, a major political sweep took place further south in the town of Nalda. A substantial group of residents was rounded up and transported directly to the trench lines at La Barranca for execution. This group included multiple members of the same local families, systematically eliminating civic resistance – Martín Bazo Aragón, and Pablo Bazo Viguera, Isidoro Bazo Ruiz, Vicente Rico Ruiz, Marcelino Rico Zorzano, Manuel Moracia Zorzano, Jesús Nalda, and Inocente Peso Rico.
The machinery of La Barranca then turned its focus toward the major republican and agrarian stronghold of Calahorra. Among those brought to the Lardero trenches and murdered on 5 October were Inocencio Garoña Jiménez and María Restauración Gasco Romero. The killing of women like María was a deliberate tactic designed to inflict absolute terror on left-wing families. The following day saw no respite. A massive, mixed contingent of prisoners from Calahorra and various surrounding Rioja towns arrived at La Barranca in waves. The execution squads worked continuously through the night to process the volume of detainees, filling the trenches dug by previous prisoners.
The high-intensity week culminated on 7 October with another mass execution at La Barranca, specifically targeting key union members, agrarian reformers, and republican sympathisers from Calahorra. Documented victims of this specific day include Cecilio Galarreta Santamaría, Félix Guardo Villegas, Atanasio Lacalle Álamos, Acisclo Llerena del Campo, Francisco Castor Lozano Fernández and Fermín Ruiz Andrés. Today, the site of these executions is preserved as the Civil Cemetery of La Barranca, a prominent memorial managed by the Asociación La Barranca to honor the 407 documented victims of the region.
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