Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
Simancas barracks siege memorial, Gijón
City site
The story
When the coup failed in Gijón, Colonel Antonio Pinilla and about 600 soldiers of the Simancas mountain infantry regiment shut themselves into the Simancas barracks, a former Jesuit college. Asturian militias besieged them with dynamite, artillery and aircraft, while the Nationalist cruiser Almirante Cervera fired from offshore but could not relieve them. When the building was stormed in mid-August, Pinilla radioed the cruiser to fire on his own position. Almost the entire garrison died. The Franco regime made the siege a heroic legend, and a memorial to the regiment stands near the site.
What you can see today
The 1958 Monumento a los Héroes del Simancas on the façade of the Colegio de la Inmaculada, Avenida Hermanos Felgueroso 25. It is a Francoist monument, shown here as a historical exhibit; the barracks building itself was later rebuilt.
Plan your visit
In the El Coto/La Arena area of Gijón, easy to reach on foot or by bus from the centre.
Sources
- tracesofwar.com/sights/90320/Memorial-Mountain-Infantry-Regiment-Simancas.htm
- tracesofwar.com/sights/90320/Memorial-Mountain-Infantry-Regiment-Simancas.htm
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Gij%C3%B3n
Nearby sites
- Ceares cemetery mass grave, Gijón · 1 km
- Oviedo front – Cerdeño bunker · 22 km
- Oviedo siege – the old town · 25 km
- El Salvador cemetery mass grave, Oviedo · 25 km
- El Mazuco & Sierra del Cuera · 67 km
- Convento de San Marcos, León (concentration camp) · 104 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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