Cantonalists without a canton in Northern Spain: The republican insurrectional culture in Asturias

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to trace the expressions of intransigent federalism in Asturias, inscribing them in a discursive and insurrectional sequence that culminated in the First Republic with the cantonal revolution. The need to include the northern regions in the map of republican insurrectionalism is defended, since it was a polycentric phenomenon despite the different scope and projection of the attempts. For the period of 1873-1874, specifically, it is proposed to differentiate between a cantonalism in power and a cantonalism without a canton, which could respond to what was observed in Asturias, where a guerrilla faction was raised in 1874 that official sources called «cantonal» without any autonomous municipal power being established. In this sense, the paper also tries to weigh the reasons why an Asturian Canton was not proclaimed in the terms in which it was done in other places in Spain. From various discursive testimonies, it is highlighted that there was talk of «cantons» in the federal building that was conceived by certain sectors of Asturian republicanism, and it is considered that this thought cannot be separated from a singularly active insurrectional tradition that It reiterated —even in part— procedure, objectives, leadership and social bases at least since October 1869. Along with the indispensable newspaper sources, letters from the archival collection of José Posada Herrera, books of municipal government agreements and other complementary documentation have been handled.