The siege of Oviedo, the capital of the northern province of Asturias, was one of the initial
military engagements of the Spanish Civil War, and one that took
both sides, in a sense, by surprise. The Nationalists had written off
the province as one firmly under Republican control. Based on the
same assumption, the Republicans had moved thousands of fighters
away from Oviedo to other areas of Asturias and Spain where they
could potentially be of more use. But when the garrison commander,
a rebel colonel by the name of Antonio Aranda Mata, called in the
Civil Guard and Assault Guard to take control of Oviedo in support
of the military uprising, his men heeded the call. They assumed
control of the town as well as the surrounding high ground, carrying
out limited local counterattacks to throw their new enemy off balance.
