Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
El Salvador cemetery mass grave, Oviedo
Repression & memory site
The story
After Asturias fell in October 1937, Francoist courts-martial and extrajudicial killings claimed many lives. About 1,000 executions took place in Oviedo alone, and killings continued into the 1950s. Many of those shot against the walls of the municipal cemetery of El Salvador, at San Esteban de las Cruces, were buried in a common grave there. The names of 1,316 identified victims are now engraved on walls around the grave, making it one of the largest memorials of its kind in northern Spain. Earlier, in the Republican zone, rightists and clergy had also been killed in Asturias in 1934 and 1936.
What you can see today
Memorial walls engraved with the names of identified victims around the mass-grave area inside the cemetery.
Plan your visit
Open during cemetery hours; please be respectful. It is south of the city centre in San Esteban de las Cruces.
- Open
- Daily 09:00–18:30, all year
Checked September 2026 from official sources: cementeriomunicipaloviedo.com, cementeriomunicipaloviedo.com. Things change, so check before you travel.
Sources
- tracesofwar.com/sights/90428/Mass-Grave-Cementerio-del-Salvador.htm
- tracesofwar.com/sights/90428/Mass-Grave-Cementerio-del-Salvador.htm
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asturias_Offensive
Nearby sites
- Oviedo siege – the old town · 2 km
- Oviedo front – Cerdeño bunker · 3 km
- Ceares cemetery mass grave, Gijón · 24 km
- Simancas barracks siege memorial, Gijón · 25 km
- El Mazuco & Sierra del Cuera · 79 km
- Convento de San Marcos, León (concentration camp) · 85 km
All 158 sites in Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 →
The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
A free field guide for your phone: the route, the maps and the stories built in, even with no signal. The battlefields, trenches, ruined villages, shelters, museums and memorials of the Spanish Civil War across the whole of Spain, told fairly from both sides.
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