Napoleon’s nemesis

‘Plucky’ is a great word. It conjures up images stubborn ‘little guys’ who refuse to be bullied. Think Asterix the Gaul smashing Romans across a field, only without the performance enhancing drugs.

Soaking up the history of Asturias, one of Spain’s northernmost provinces, you get a feel for the kind of plucky attitude that the little Frenchman-with-the-big-face-hair personified; it isn’t just a taste for wild boar that they share.

Asturianos have been snubbing authority since about 29 BC, when the Roman’s found dealing with their beautiful mountain terrain so difficult. This was followed by invading Visgoths and Moors, between the 6^th and 8^th centuries respectively, all of whom got an equally bloody nose.

In 1808 they even invented the word ‘guerrilla’, meaning: little-war, when they rose up against the diminutive Gallic dictator Napoleon; having the cheek to declare war against his entire empire and kicking out the French Governor thus inspiring the rest of Spain to follow suit.

However, as I’m sure you are aware, the trouble with pint size fascist tyrants is that once you get rid of one there is always another, and by the 1930s they were up in arms again, this time against Cliff Richard’s arch nemesis General Francisco ‘do-these-jack-boots-make-me-look-taller?’ Franco, who took his war against the Asturias Marxist Workers Movement to its bloody conclusion at the Battle of El Mazuco in 1937, yet the area always remained a kind of Star Wars-esque rebel stronghold.

So when your next visiting the coastal city of Gijon or planning a tour around the capital of Oviedo, remember to leave thoughts of regional domination at home, this may be one of Spain’s smallest provinces, but it certainly packs the biggest punch.

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