Painted Tonsures and Potato-sellers: Priests, Passing and Survival in the Asturian Revolution

Abstract

The Asturian revolutionary insurrection of 1934 saw the greatest outburst of anticlerical bloodletting in Spain for a century and prefigured the dramatic wave of anticlerical violence during the Spanish Civil War. Scholars have neglected, however, to study the experience of clerical survival. This article analyses how members of the clergy survived the insurrection through the prism of passing, concentrating on cleric's dress, gestures and revolutionary performances. It demonstrates the need to study survival processes, sheds new light on clerical identity, agency and existing cultural gulfs in 1930s' Spain, and underlines the contingency of violence in revolutionary contexts.