Orwell, Barcelona and the Spanish Civil War
The war against General Franco’s military uprising was fought not only by Spaniards, but also by an international ensemble of individuals compelled by the malignant rise of fascism in Europe and emboldened by the promise that, in this instance at least, it could be overcome. Among them was George Orwell, one of the great writers of the 20th Century. His service is commemorated in Barcelona’s Barrio Gotico district, by Plaza George Orwell, a colorful square that teems with life. Its dedication is a reminder that hateful doctrines such as fascism, while somehow inevitable, will never fail to inspire a righteous opposition.
Orwell recorded his experiences in Homage to Catalonia, a gripping first-person account of the war that gave a vivid impression of Barcelona at the time. When he first arrived here, in late December 1936, a “definite revolutionary outbreak” had laid to waste to any visible remnants of the feudalism that Franco sought to re-impose. It was an exciting milieu that appealed to Orwell’s then idealistic socialism: “It was the first time I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle.”
He strongly sympathized with the seemingly widely held faith that a different society could exist, recounting that “above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of freedom and equality.”
Orwell soon enlisted, deeming this “a state of affairs worth fighting for.”
Preparatory training was held on Montjuïc hill, overlooking Plaza España. The same area is now home to an Olympic complex and corporate conference center. It is hard to believe that it was once used for coaching guerrilla warfare. During this period, Orwell was moved to comment effusively on the locals he encountered: “I defy anyone to be thrown as I was among the Catalan working class and not be struck by their essential decency; above all their straightforwardness and generosity.” Just as one can scarcely deny this sentiment to the present day, it is likewise hard to argue with his assertion that “the one Spanish word that no foreigner can avoid learning is mañana.”
Orwell returned from the front to a very different city. The anarchists were being actively undermined by the return of the Civil Guard, who had sufficiently emboldened the bourgeoisie to come out of hiding. Beyond the return of social inequality, the tenuously united front against fascism had been truly torn asunder by internecine conflict between its various political factions. Barcelona was now engulfed by a war within a war. It is not only tragic, but astonishing, to read accounts of locations such as Las Ramblas and Plaza Catalunya—to which tourists today flock en masse—being the site of military occupations and gunfights.
Orwell’s experience of the war was ultimately defined by this final exercise in futile, wasteful folly. His actual deployment saw him marooned on the Aragon front, which he and his comrades maintained to little or no avail, while other troops fell in fierce battle all over Spain. He was himself shot in the throat, while addressing his men from a foolishly elevated position. This brutally unfortunate event compounded his feeling that the war was nothing but “a bloody pantomime.” However, while the heroic narrative of Homage to Catalonia never comes close to fulfillment in the broader sense, it is the seeming detritus that remains so precious; the wonder that so many risked everything for a noble cause, the warmth and brotherhood that flourished amid such hardship and, finally, the unflinching account that remains to enrich our notions of history.
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