A couple years before the Spanish Civil War, a mini-revolution would rock Asturias and Oviedo. The Miners' Strike of 1934, or the Revolución de Asturias, lasted just two weeks but resulted in a lot of carnage. It was one of the first indications that the bad blood between "The Two Spains" was about to boil over.
While we were in Oviedo, I found myself thinking a lot about mining for the first time in my life. The trapped Chilean miners were making headlines worldwide, a miner's strike was big news in Spain. But once I started considering the profession, I couldn't turn my mind off it. The vulgar exploitation of both workers and the earth for the further enrichment of corporations makes the mining industry the zenith of human greed and misery. There's something grotesquely romantic about it.
