Red Asturias – A Spanish Civil War Poem

Red Asturias – by H. Perry

We stood at the Barricades
Waiting for the fascists
While the sun shone up on us
And the churches burned to ashes
When the men left town
The General assured our safety
But then he turned upon us
Their trust in him to hasty

The scene was set
Two years ago in 1934
The Miners’ on a General Strike
A prelude to the Civil War
The villages became collectives
Cash no longer changing hands
Churches became our food stores
When we took back the lands

But our ideas were defeated
When the soldiers came
Now they’re back in 1936
To fight Republicans again
But this time, we will win,
And Spain will see better days
We are Red Asturias –
See you on the barricades!

This poem is set in the northern Spanish area of Asturias in the 1930’s. The second verse is based in 1934 when the CNT organised a General Strike in Spain in to protest against the re-establishment of right-wing politics in the Republican Parliament. The strike was not widely carried out except in some areas of the north, including Catalonia and the Asturias. In Asturias the miners marched on the capital, Oviedo, and it turned into an armed insurrection where Civil Guard offices and Army Barracks were seized by the Left. This turned into a 9 day insurrection across the area, where Communists took control of some towns and villages and Anarchists took control of others instigating People’s Committees and turning village life into collective life. Having read quite a lot of sources it appears that the Anarchists were not allowed arms to defend the Collectives from the opposition. They were denied them by the Communists who were much more authoritarian in their approach to life under their rule and that appears to be why the new social structure collapsed in 1934 when the Army came in to defeat the insurrection.

The other two verses of the poem are set in 1936 in Oviedo. After a couple of years of relative peace in Spain, in July 1936, the right under General Franco, staged a coup on the Parliament. In Ovideo, which was by all accounts still quite Republican, the General in power in the city, assured the people that he was on the republican side and the city was safe with him. So the men went off to fight in other places. Once they had gone, the city was declared for the Right. The republicans had been duped. This part of the poem is from the point of view of a republican trapped in the city at this time, but who remembers 1934 and the Collectives and believes they can defeat the fascists and build a new society based on Collectivism again.

In reality, Oviedo was fought over for about a year. Asturais finally fell to the Fascists in 1937 when the valley containing the town of Infiesto, about half an hour east of Oviedo, where the remaining Republicans were fighting, was bombed from the air. The photos are of a Civil War memorial just outside Infiesto.

Lion Man

I went to the Ice Age Art exhibition at the British Museum last week. It was very apt day because although it was the very end of March it was snowing when I left home, and very cold. But internally I was feeling warm – I had been looking forward to the ice age art exhibition for weeks, if not months.

Why am I so excited by the thought of ice age art? Well, I have always been fascinated by ice age cave art, and stories of their discoveries are enough to send a shiver down my spine. For example, imagine being part of a team of teenagers who are pot holing. You shimmy down into a small hole and drop into the darkness. You come to the bottom of a shallow cave, turn on your torch and in the dim light, you are met by the most beautiful prehistoric paintings of horses. Shine your torch at another part of the wall, and there are images of bison and reindeer not seen for tens of thousands of years.

This is what happened in the 1960s at Tito Bustillo in Northern Spain. When I went to visit the cave in 2011, there were a limited number of people allowed and visitors needed to go with the tour guide. I was unable to understand the tour guide, because my Spanish is not good enough. But I did not feel that I needed a tour guide to tell me about the art anyway. The images spoke for themselves. I was captivated. Imagine being the first person to see pictures for 20,000 years – my heart pounds just thinking about it.

Of course, in Britain we have our own ice age goodies. Creswell Crags, on the Derbyshire / Nottinghamshire boarder is a limestone gorge (featured in the photo) where prehistoric man lived and hunted the animals that came through. Stone tools and animal bones from the end of the last ice age have been found here as well as cave art. They are not paintings here, but carvings enhanced by natural rock formations in the caves, such as a bird that has been identified as an Ibis. Some of these are much less obvious to see than the lovely paintings of Tito Bustillo. But they also have their 10,000 year old charm. My favorite piece as Creswell Craggs was the piece of bone with a tiny horse carved onto it. You have to look hard, but it is there. And it was featured in the ice age art exhibition at the British Museum.

However, nothing could prepare me for coming face to face with Lion Man at the ice age art exhibition, the first piece in the display. The legs of a man, the head of a Lion, carved from bone. This forty thousand year old piece of prehistoric German art blew my mind. His lion face was both proud and serene all at once. He was best viewed from the side. How, I asked myself, could the human mind from all that time ago, come up with such an idea? Was it just a good imagination? Was it a nod towards Shamanism? I don’t know the answer to this.

Another of my favorite items in the exhibition was a forty thousand year old flute carved from a Griffon Vulture bone on which the pentatonic scale can be played according to experimental archaeologists.

Other parts of the exhibition showed figures carved in poses that had been identified as dance poses. And this got me thinking: it all suggests that dancing, music and art have always been a central cultural aspect to human nature. And long may it remain so.

The Mystery of the Maltese Cart Ruts

The Island of Malta contains some interesting features which remain a mystery to scholars of both pre-history and history.

The Mediterranean island is formed from limestone and within great patches of these lie the strange and enchanting cart ruts. They are found all over the island; grooves, which run in pairs gorged several inches deep into the limestone rock, like tyre tracks but leaving leaving no surface tread.

Experts have agreed that these are not natural features. They are not caused by water run off for example. Typically, this is about the only thing that they agree on! There is no consensus on age, although they are probably either pre-historic or Roman. As for who made them, the cart ruts, which often curve round corners and intercept each other are associated with small scale limestone quarrying.

Quarry tracks would provide the most plausible explanation as there are scores of pre-historic temple sites on Malta, with features made from limestone. The rock would need to be moved somehow – hence the cart ruts.

A popular theory is that cart ruts were made by Neolithic or Bronze Age man dragging quarried limestone rocks to build Malta’s pre-historic temples. However, the ruts cannot be traced from beginning to end because modern roads, farms and housing have destroyed their routes so it is impossible to prove.

The form of transportation making the ruts also remains a mystery, as the expert’s debate whether the rock would be moved by a type of sledge. If so, they would have to have been pulled by domesticated animals who would leave track marks behind, and as such, there are none. A possible explanation to this could be that the ancient soil tracks covering the ruts, contained traces that were eroded away. So nobody really knows.

There are similar features to the ruts in other countries; on the island of Sicily, for example, which is only 159 miles away from Malta. And there are some in southern Italy too.

All remain a mystery. A beautiful mystery at that – when I visited the largest site on Malta, nick-named Clapham Junction due to the amount of ruts found there, the site was peaceful, and covered in purple and white autumn crocus’ adding to the mystery and beauty of this site.

Sometimes it is the sense of mystery that is the most interesting feature of historical sites.

Ref: David H Trump, Malta Prehistory and Temples