"Nacido en Oviedo" - one of the pitfalls of Cuban Genealogy - by Fernando Lamas

The following was published as a post in the Cuban Genealogy/Genealogia Cubana Facebook page on 23 January 2020 and is used with the permission of its author, Fernando Lamas:

“Nacido en Oviedo” - One of the Pitfalls of Cuban Genealogy

I originally started to write this post as a reply in a thread posted by Maria Lopez Keith, who was searching for the genealogy of an ancestor documented in Cuban records as having been “born in Oviedo”. However, since this topic has repeatedly cropped up in my own genealogy, and will be helpful to others, I decided to devote its own thread to it.

Oviedo is the capital city of Asturias and being “born in Oviedo” means being born in Oviedo, does it not?

That’s the pitfall. Things are far more complicated than that.

Maria López Keith, here are some explanations and advice that may help you track down your ancestor from “Oviedo”.

I saw one of your posts where you stated that “Asturias was named Oviedo from the 1500s through the 1700s”. That is not the case but I certainly understand where all this confusion comes from. Cuban documents can be highly misleading when documenting ancestry from Spain because little care was given in Cuba to document the complexities of Spanish administrative divisions. My direct paternal line descends from very well-documented families in Asturias, documented back to the 1500s and even earlier, so I have examined countless documents from Asturias in the Spanish online archives (PARES) over the past 16 years, spanning from the 19th Century to the Middle Ages.

The Kingdom of Asturias, from where the Reconquista began, has always been, and will always be “Asturias”. In fact, the Asturians joke that “España es Asturias y, lo demás, tierra conquistada” (“Spain is Asturias and, the rest, is merely conquered land”). Since the Middle Ages, Asturias has been called the Principado (Principate) de Asturias. Its ancient capital was the city of Oviedo.

The confusion comes with the administrative divisions of both the Church and the Crown. A “Comarca” was a large Administrative Region and, prior to 1833, the Principado de Asturias had two. What is now the modern province of Asturias was under one Comarca named “Asturias de Oviedo”, named after the ancient capital of Asturias. Most of what is now the modern province of Santander was under a Comarca named “Asturias de Santillana”. (See 1696 map)

In 1833, all of Spain was re-organized into “Historical Regions”, one of them being Asturias. These Historical Regions were, in turn, further divided into Provinces. The Historical Region of Galicia, being larger, had 4 provinces within it: La Coruña, Lugo, Odense and Pontevedra. What used to be the Comarca of “Asturias de Oviedo” was named the Historical Region of Asturias and, being smaller, had a single province, encompassing its entire territory, that was then named the “Province of Oviedo”. (See 1910 map) “Asturias de Santillana” was swallowed up by the Historical Region of Castilla Vieja (Old Castile) and made into the province of Santander.

Beyond those very broad regions, documenting where somebody was born involved the geographic and administrative divisions of the “Consejos”, the equivalent of counties, centered around the lager cities, which, in turn, included surrounding smaller towns which, in turn, were assigned to different Church parishes.

Obviously, it was quite a mess to keep all of this straight, even in Spain itself. So, imagine what happened in Cuba, where the Registro Civil functionary or the priest performing a baptism or marriage may not have had any ancestry from, or knowledge of, the geographic and administrative complexities of Asturias.

For example: By verbal report or by Spanish written documents, the information comes to a Cuban Registro Civil functionary or a Cuban parish priest that, in 1810, Fulano de Tal was born or was married or died in: The Parish of Santa Maria Magdalena, in the small town of Rales, in the Consejo of Llanes, whose seat is the large city of Lanes, in the Comarca de Asturias de Oviedo or the post-1833 Province of Oviedo, of the Principado de Asturias, ..... Spain.

The chances that the Cuban Registro Civil functionary or the Cuban parish priest would meticulously document all of that information as carefully as Registro Civil functionaries and priests back in Asturias did was slim to none.

They simply did not care.

Even today, if you look up the official birth certificate of the birth of Archie, the son of Prince Harry, the birthplace of the mother, Meghan Markle, listed as a “Princess of the United Kingdom”, is listed merely as .... “California”.

The Cuban Registro Civil functionaries and the Cuban priests of the 19th Century did not care about specific small towns in Asturias any more than the 21st Century United Kingdom cares that the City of Los Angeles exists.

Therefore, from all that information, a Cuban priest or Registro Civil functionary might simply document that Fulano de Tal was born in “Spain” or in “Asturias”.

Very frequently, especially after 1833, they would only document “Oviedo, Spain”. Naturally, the Cuban genealogy researchers often believe that the individual was born in the capital city of Oviedo. However, “Oviedo” could mean the “Comarca de Asturias de Oviedo” or, after 1833, the “Provincia de Oviedo”, either one of which could mean any town , anywhere, in the entire modern-day Province of Asturias.

If you are very lucky, and the priest had personal knowledge of where the larger city of Llanes was, he might document the birthplace as “Llanes”. However, that leaves you at the “Consejo de Llanes” level which is as specific as saying that the birth was in Miami-Dade County or in Broward County.

As far as a Cuban document bothering to document the actual small town in the Consejo of Llanes, ..... Forget it!

So, tracking down a Spaniard in Asturias from only the highly flawed information of Cuban documents is often a hopeless task. Even the most accurate information usually leaves you at the level that John Doe was born in Miami-Dade County. Since baptism and marriage and death entries will be found in specific parish books, in specific parishes in specific small towns, the task is like finding a needle in a hay stack.

Somehow or other, you need to discover the most likely small town. Guessing is okay. Guessing is better than nothing. You mentioned knowing that, in the 1880s, the ancestor that stayed in Spain was still living in “Cancienes”. That is a specific parish in the Corvera de Asturias municipality. So, if that ancestor stayed in the town where he was born, you may have hit the jackpot.

Now what?

After 100 years, all the local parish baptism, marriage and death books of the Catholic Church are supposed to be sent, for archival safekeeping, to the Arch-Dioceses. Fortunately, all of Asturias is under a single arch-dioceses, the Archdiocese of Oviedo. (See Arch-Diocese of Oviedo administrative map).

So, what you need to do now is to get a researcher in Asturias, Spain to look for the birth of your ancestor, who was born, as you wrote you suspected, circa 1811, in the baptism books of the parish of Cancienes of the Corvera de Asturias region, which should be stored in the Archives of the Arch-Diocese of Oviedo. Due to the Spanish Civil War, the books of some parishes may have been destroyed.

If the baptismal book entry is found, you can then get a transcription like the one I posted, of the marriage entry of the Asturias grandparents of my maternal great-grandfather.

My maternal great-grandfather came to Cuba in the 1870s and, in Cuban documents, his parents and grandparents from “the Parish of Santa Maria Madelena, in the town of Rales, in the Consejo of Llanes, in the Comarca de Asturias de Oviedo, of the Principado de Asturias, Spain” were simply listed as having been born in .....

..... “Llanes” or the infamous “Oviedo”.

In order to track them down, in the Archives of the Arch-Diocese of Oviedo, I had to find the name of the exact small town and parish of the family (Rales, Consejo de Llanes, Comarca de Asturias de Oviedo, Principado de Asturias) in the published 1831 census of the Llanes region, “Padrón general de la jurisdicción de Llanes en 1831”.