 Complete the following phrase:  The Interprovincial Council of Asturias and León was born on 6 September 1936, as an agreement between anarchists and socialists, and with representation of all the Republican faction in Asturias. On 23 December 1936, the Second Spanish Republic government recognized the Interprovincial Council of Asturias and León as well as other councils in the country the Regional Defence Council of Aragon and the Interprovincial Council of Santander, Palencia and Burgos as autonomous entities. Independence was declared on 24 August 1937, when the city of Santander fell to Nationalist forces, leaving the remaining republican forces in Asturias isolated several hundred miles from those republican forces in the southern and eastern parts of Spain. The leaders of the new nation claimed that declaring the independence should not be considered as a defiance against the Republican government, but rather an attempt to concentrate the local defense against Francos forces in the 