Sad, but not surprising. Owing to its calendar placement it always struggled to attract the same quality of field as the other Spanish races (I mean a few years ago, before the bottom fell out, not in recent years when weak fields have been universal at them) with top Spanish riders usually disappearing off to the Ardennes, and it often saw some dubious Portuguese continental teams, interesting Colombian teams (Boyacá es Para Vivirla with Freddy Montaña in 2009, Colombia es Pasión with Duarte and Alex Caño in 2010 and EPM-UNE with Juan Pablo Suárez and Giovanny Báez in 2011 being memorable). It also came with one of the most dubious winner's lists ever, with a long tradition of doped winners (Piepoli, Mayo, Sevilla, Koldo Gil, Adolfo García) and associations with doping (the LA-MSS whitewash in 2008, Mancebo winning for Rock Racing in 2009, Zaballa's long escapade and much later referral for doping in 2010).
However, regardless of shadiness, the big problem was clearly the reducing race days. It's traditionally been 5 with a split day, plus the Subida al Naranco was a separate, standalone one-day race from 2002 until 2010 (a hill TT to Naranco was often included in the main race prior to this). So traditionally you had 6 days of racing, a 1.1 and a 2.1. In 2011, the Subida al Naranco was incorporated as a day of the main race, bringing us from 6 to 5 days' racing (this was actually a success, with the small gaps from the final day leading to exciting racing as Zaballa sought to chase Javi Moreno to retain his title); 2012 saw the jettisoning of the traditional Alto del Acebo MTF as the race was cut to 3 days, making Monte Naranco the only mountain stage, an absurdity to anybody looking at a relief map of Asturias, but retaining the split day giving us 4 stages. Last year, they cut it even further, to just 2, with an intermediate stage and then the Subida al Naranco, using only a fraction of the province and removing the ITT. Although they had diaried 3 days for it this year, it was clear the most likely was that it would become a one-day race (like the Vuelta a La Rioja or the Vuelta a Madrid) or disappear entirely.
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