George Orwell: Homenaje a Cataluña (Spanish language, 2011, Debate)
273 pages
Spanish language
Published Jan. 14, 2011 by Debate.
In 1936, George Orwell went to Spain to report on the civil war and instead joined the P.O.U.M. militia to fight against the Fascists. In this account of his experience, he describes both the bleak and the comic aspects of trench warfare on the Aragon front, the Barcelona uprising in May 1937, his nearly fatal wounding just two weeks later, and his escape from Barcelona into France after the P.O.U.M. was suppressed. As important as the story of the war itself is Orwell's analysis of why the Communist Party sabotaged the workers' revolution and branded the P.O.U.M. as Trotskyist, which provides an essential key to understanding the outcome of the war and an ironic sidelight on international Communism. It was during this period in Spain that Orwell learned for himself the nature of totalitarianism in practice, an education that laid the groundwork for his books Animal farm and 1984.
Orwell went to Spain as a journalist but soon signed up as a partisan to fight in the Spanish civil war in the late 1930s. Excellent account of his own experiences and of the chaos that reigned during that period. The political landscape was extremely complex with multitudinous factions and ever shifting alliances.
stunning writing that gives a feeling for both trench warfare and street conflict
the book captures the joys of liberation - and how easily they can be lost
it's fascinating to see how some of Orwell's experiences and observations here come up again in 1984 - a fear of rats, poor-quality tobacco falling out of cigarettes, newspapers rewriting history, worries of being informed on, and the horrors of being confined as a political prisoner
Orwell's personal bravery and dedication to goodness are also evident from this book
