Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's account of his experiences as a volunteer on the republican side during the Spanish Civil War. But it's not just another memoir. No, it's far more. For it marks a decisive stage in his progress as a writer and a thinker. Indeed, if one wanted to understand the roots behind the major themes in both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four this book is essential reading.

Orwell, who had developed a general but rather unfocused sympathy for socialism, came to Spain to fight against 'fascism' without any particular idea of what he was fighting for. Like the majority of the foreign volunteers he was likely to have ended up serving with the International Brigades, controlled by the communists and ultimately directed by the Comintern in Moscow. But he did not. Quite by chance he enrolled in the militia of the Partido Obrero Unificación Marxista or POUM, a local Marxist and anti-Stalinist movement set up by one Andrés Nin, a former associate of Leon Trotsky. Yes, it was by chance, but politically and intellectually it was a decisive step in turning Eric Blair, the author's real name, into the mature George Orwell.

The Spanish Civil War was a struggle between the left and the right, between progress and reaction, between enlightenment and oppression. Well, no, it was far more complex than that. In 1937 on the republican side the struggle had become a war within a war, as Stalin decided to suppress all of the non-communist factions on the side of the government. This was the time of the Great Purge, of the Moscow Show Trails and the general attack on all 'Trotsky Fascists'. This was a time when every weapon was used in a campaign of disinformation, one based on the grossest abuse of language by the communist and socialist left, one based on the systematic rewriting of history. After all, he who controls the past controls the future.

Orwell, who had been serving on the Catalan front, returned to Barcelona in May of 1937. There he discovered that the free and comradely atmosphere that he had encountered when he first came to Spain had changed utterly. He was to be caught up in some extraordinary events now known as the Barcelona May Days, in which one left-wing faction fought against another left-wing faction. In the communist controlled press the POUM was denounced as 'fascist plotters'. With agents of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police at work, Nin was arrested along with many others, and subsequently murdered in custody. Orwell himself had to leave Spain in fear of his life.

Homage to Catalonia is a straightforward account of his experiences at the front and in Barcelona, packaged in some general political musings. The language, as one would expect from one of the great modern masters of English prose, is limpid. It's an honest book, too honest for some; Victor Gollancz, the left-wing publishing house for whom he had previously written, refused to accept his account of his Spanish experience even before a single word had been written. Why? Because he had served with the POUM, that's why. It should be remembered that Gollancz was not even controlled by the Communist Party. This attitude, this unwillingness to say anything critical of the official Soviet line, not stopping short of the Moscow Trials, was to be found right across much of the left-leaning and liberal opinion of the day. Of the British press Orwell was to write:

In Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship that is implied by an ordinary lie...I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various "party lines."

Orwell, as I have said, went to Spain with his politics largely unfocused. He came back a committed anti-Stalinist. He came back believing that there was a standard of objective truth that had to be defended, a standard of truth that should corrupted by the demands of propaganda or the exigencies of dictatorship. He came back believing that two plus two equals four; and if that is granted all else follows.

"The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty & a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency" (p.172)

The opening chapters in particular lead me to imagine Basil Fawlty going abroad, or possibly the travel programmes of my youth, the accommodation is terrible, the way the food and wine are served is unhygienic, everything is disorganised and late, the Spaniards don't even speak Spanish, and with the fascists 700 metres away can you even call it a war? No, it is "a comic opera with the occasional death" (p.34) as he is told.

His comment on a Jewish-Polish officer is that he speaks terrible English, for some curious reason I imagine that when inevitably Orwell was made a corporal that he spent most of his time teaching his men to speak English rather than Catalan.

Then after establishing an image of himself as fusty Englishman abroad and war as pantomime (no uniforms, terrible old rifles, awful ammunition, no maps, no artillery, no field glasses) he then looks at the broader political picture explaining the war as one of Revolution against fascism, in which the Communists pushed for fighting the war first and then having a revolution after - this approach was aiming to reassure the international community - while the Anarchists wanted to see the revolution accomplished first. Orwell explains how he began by backing the Communists in this regard but over time shifted to the Anarchist position believing it alone had the potential for weakening Franco by inspiring revolt in fascist held territories. In the Communist backed crushing of the Anarchists in Catalonia as a viable political force one can see the origins of Animal Farm.

In the middle of the book he is caught up in street fighting in Barcelona which leads into a discussion of its misrepresentation in the press on political grounds before he returns to the front where he gets shot. The food in the hospitals is plentiful and rich, but with the classic complaint of an English tourist to southern Europe: it is too greasy, food culture is changing even in Britain, a contemporary might instead praise the artisanal quality of such food and its regional authenticity, but back then it was just considered greasy  and lacking lard and beef dripping.

In contrast to Laurie Lee's A moment of war Orwell was not repeatedly arrested as a suspected spy, this was because he entered affiliated with the Independent Labour Party which itself was linked to the P.O.U.M. militia - an anarchist grouping. His account of fighting and non-fighting is impressionistic and fascinating, cold, hunger, and lack of sleep are more pressing dangers than bombs and bullets. Pretty much everything in Spain to his eyes is execrable  particularly the agricultural tools apart from the people who he pretty much universally likes and admires.

The Spanish Civil war still seems to be in progress on various (non-military) fronts if not exactly raging, aside front that I think in several of Orwell's comments you can see the roots of 1984 and Animal farm.

Ken Loach's Spanish Civil War film "Land and Freedom" draws strongly upon Homage to Catalonia as a source, though it's main character is a working class, rather than upper class, Englishman.

مذكرات جورج أورويل عن انخراطه في الحرب الأهلية الإسبانية، ومعاناته أثناء الحرب. تحليله ونظرته للصحافة والحكومات التي تدخلت في هذه الحرب. كتاب جميل للمهتمين بمعرفة ما حصل في الحرب الأهلية الإسبانية من منظور كاتب وصحفي خاض الحرب حينذاك.



اقتباسات


“كان مُريعًا أن يكون حُماة الجمهورية هذا الشراذم من الأطفال البائسين يحملون تلك البنادق التالفة التي لا يعرفون حتى كيفية استخدامها”.

إحدى أفظع خصائص الحرب أن كل الدعاية الحربية، كل العجيج والكذب والكراهية، تأتي دائمًا من البعيدين عن القتال الفعلي” .

“ما إن علمت أن الرصاصة قد نفذت من عنقي حتى سلّمت بأنه قضي عليّ. لم أسمع بإنسان أو حيوان تصيبه الرصاصة في منتصف عنقه ويعيش بعدها. كان الدم يتقاطر من فمي. فقلت في نفسي، انقطع الشريان. وتساءلت ترى كم يبقى الواحد حيًا بعد قطع الشريان في عنقه؟”.

“الفظائع تصدّق أو تكذّب على أساس واحد وحيد، هو التعاطف السياسي. الكل يصدق بقصص فظائع العدو، ويكذب قصص فظائع الجانب الذي هو معه، دون أن يكلف نفسه عناء التفحص والبرهان”.

“لم أجد أي حادثة بالذات اتفق اليمين واليسار على روايتها معًا. والأشد غرابة أنه في أية لحظة قد ينقلب الوضع فجأة بحيث تصبح القصة التي كانت البارحة ثابتةً بلا شك، كذبًا مفضوحًا يدعو للسخرية، والسبب فقط أن المشهد السياسي قد تغير”.

“السماحة مؤلمة بقدر السفالة، وعرفان الجميل كريه بقدر إنكاره”.

“صحافة تنشر ما لا علاقة له بالواقع إطلاقًا. حتى ولا الحقيقة المتضمنة في الكذب العادي. قرأت عن معارك عظيمة حيث لم يجر في الحقيقة أي قتال، ورأيت الصمت المطبق مع مقتل المئات من الجنود. رأيت الجنود الذين يحاربون ببسالة يدانون ويوصفون بالجبن والخيانة، وغيرهم ممن لم يطلقوا رصاصة واحدة يمجدون أبطالًا بانتصارات مختلقة؛ رأيت صحفًا في لندن توزع الأكاذيب بالمفرق ومفكرين متنورين يبنون هياكل عاطفية زائفة على أحداث لم تحدث أصلًا. الواقع أنني رأيت التاريخ يُكتب لا بحدود ما وقع، بل بحدود ما كان يجب أن يقع بحسب مختلف الخطوط الحزبية”.

“سوف يكتب تاريخ ما لهذه الحرب، وبعد أن يكون شهود العيان قد أصبحوا أمواتًا جميعًا، فسيقبل هذا التاريخ ويسلّم به. وهكذا فكل الدواعي العملية تبشر بأن الكذب سوف يصبح حقيقة”.

Agradezco mucho esta clase de libros escritos con la urgencia de la actualidad, lucidos y que quedan como testimonio personal de un momento de la historia.
Ahora que se estila mucho el retorcer la historia para adaptarla a tus intereses son como una brisa de aire fresco.
No dejan de ser opiniones personales y por tanto subjetivas, no sustituyen el trabajo de un historiador documentado e imparcial, pero yo las agradezco por frescas
Este hombre escribe poco después y durante su experiencia en los primeros meses de la guerra civil española y habla sin tapujos de sus experiencias, analizando, diseccionando...
Viendo parte de su documental, con un actor recreando videos caseros, todavía me atrae más su figura.
Debió ser todo un personaje
(La cara de la que hace de su mujer cuando relata lo que sintió cuando le alcanzó una bala que por poco lo mata es un poema...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6txp...
Es imperdonable que todavía no haya leído 1984 pero no tardaré en hacerlo

George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War because he believed in democracy and was against fascism. He believed in the rights of the working class and human decency for all. His experiences in Spain only deepened these ideals.

In addition to Orwell's descriptions of his experiences in Spain while fighting with the P.O.U.M., I found Lionel Trilling's introduction fascinating and equally informative. Trilling pays homage to Orwell the man. According to Trilling, one of the leading critics of the 20th century, Orwell was a virtuous man. He fought for what he believed in. He lived his life by the virtues he deemed important.

I wanted to read this book to gain a better understanding of the reasons for this war as well as who was fighting on each side. Reasons for war are always complicated but usually the warring sides are evident: north versus south, England versus the colonies but not so in this war. Orwell does a good job defining the various participants: republicans, anarchists, racists, communists, monarchists, conservatives, and catholics.

As in any war, the horror, the suffering, the deprivations are chilling. Orwell describes how poorly prepared and poorly equipped the soldiers were. He often expresses his disgust with the inaccurate reporting of journalists who were nowhere near the front. He was equally appalled at the disassociation of Spainards uninvolved in the fighting. This disassociation was true of his countrymen, too. Near the end of the war Orwell prophetically says all aspects of life in England are"sleeping the deep, deep sleep from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs." And those bombs would fall mercilessly on England in just a few years.

When we will ever learn?
Oh, when will we ever learn?

I read this in College on a recommendation from another student to read up on the Spanish Civil War and Orwell's disillusionment with the communist left and gathered ideas for a later book like Animal Farm and 1984 by the betrayal of the communist faction and being a hunted man by his own ostensive side and the nasty political infights as well. I enjoyed the story and Orwell is not lacking in physical courage or integrity. Good story.

An objective five stars because this is a valuable record for historical research.
A subjective three stars for personal reading enjoyment.
I have mixed feelings about the book. Aspects of it were very good. Parts of the book dry and tedious.
The overriding thought throughout was, it was a civil war of a country with a very long Imperialist colonial history. The internal war wasn't to liberate a people from foreign oppression. And it is a country with deep cultural and powerful religious roots that weren't to be swept aside. Franco came and went. In the scheme of things, does it matter in the long run.

The passage on page 89. "I am lying hidden among small fir-trees on the low ground west of Monte Trazo, with Kopp and Bob Edwards and three Spaniards." reminded me of the first sentence and the last sentence of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. 1st: "He lay flat on the brown, pine-needle floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms . . ."
Last sentence of the novel: "He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle of the forest."

Homage to Catalonia was published 1938.
For Whom the Bell Tolls was published 1940.

Orwell and Hemingway (and Stephen Spender) were there witnessing the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway as a journalist/war correspondent for a North American Newspaper Alliance.
Hemingway and Spender were in contact in Spain. I want to know if Orwell and Spender crossed paths. Neither makes reference to the other.
Stephen Spender's account of his time in Spain during the war is the best, to be found in his autobiography 'World Within World'. The Introduction by John Bayley says "World Within World is without any question the best autobiography in English written in the Twentieth Century."

Orwell volunteered to fight in Spain.
Another thought that persisted, where he records being shot in the neck, was, now he knows how the poor bloody elephant felt. What's that! You can't compare an animal to a human life! No, of course not. A human life is far more valuable. That's why there are World Wars and nuclear weapons.
On page 197 Orwell talks about "common decency".

Finally, there is no hiding in art. An author reveals themself regardless of the collective words they choose.
Orwell shows his philistine side with his appraisal of the Cathedral in Barcelona.

Orwell nails the duplicity and pointlessness of was in his eyewitness account of his own experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The betrayal by the Russia backed Stalinist communists due to paranoia about Trotskyism ultimately contributed to the Republicans defeat by the fascists led by Franco. Consequently, leading to a bloodbath of retribution executions.

What is amazing is Orwell’s eyewitness account of his time at the front, the May Barcelona unrest, betrayal of POUM which he was a member and his miraculous survival of being shot through the throat. Then after all this his escape from Spain while many of his comrades were imprisoned or killed. Like now in the media the news story were propaganda and lies. Orwell captures the atmosphere, boredom, filth and comradeship well. An insightful book of the tragedy of the Spanish Civil war where the groups fighting the fascists due to ideology ended up fighting amongst themselves.

The book is about Orwell fighting against facism. His fear was the slide of countries from capitalism to facism. This theme is throughout many of his novels and his fear England would go the same way as Spain. However, Orwell was able to change his mind and in 1939 he defended democracy against communism after Stalin made his pact with Nazi Germany.

I find the Spanish Civil War confusing. Repeatedly I am given different interpretations and different explanations of the events. I have tried to get some understanding by reading many different books. This book is another added to all the others. I have found no one book that explained it all, with a clear overview.

This book cannot be considered an explanation of this war; it was published nine months after Orwell left Spain, and so the war was still not over. He was there from December 1936 to June 1937. The book is instead about his own personal experiences - his time fighting on the Aragon front (Huesca, the Alcubierre Ridge and Monte Oscuro),his participation in the Barcelona street-fighting(May 1937) caused by internecine party conflicts, his return to the front where he was shot in the throat by a sniper and finally his hurried escape from Spain, thoroughly disillusioned with what he had seen and experienced and party politics in general. He went there to fight against the "Fascists"; he went there to fight for independence and to express solidarity with the working class. He fought with the POUM, Worker's Party of Marxist Unification which had Trotsky affiliations, but he was never interested in party politics.

Orwell makes an attempt to collect all discussion of party politics in one separate chapter (in some books an appendix). But to understand the war you have to understand the politics, so I disliked this separation. I was lucky enough to be reading on a Kindle so I could continually look up the numerous acronyms in Orwell's telling. Although the Spanish Civil War can for simplification be seen as a fight between Franco, the Fascists’ attempt to overthrow the Republican Government under Caballero, the Republicans were not a homogeneous group. They were supported by socialists, anarchists and communists, but there was fighting between these groups too and between different communist groups. Stalin and his supporting communists backed the Republicans with military aid but at the same time were fighting the Trotsky communists. Western countries had their own interests in the outcome. The political discussion is not particularly clear: Orwell does not clearly distinguish between the different communist affiliations! Still, I am glad I read the book, to learn a little bit more.

The split between the different sections of the book were for me disruptive. They read almost ad separate essays. How did I react to each? The first part depicting the front was interesting. As with all books depicting trench warfare, the combatants' real war is often more a fight against hunger and lice and rats and cold and lack of supplies and bad planning. Lack of organization was endemic in Spain. The real problem was rarely the enemy! In Barcelona we are shown an eye view of the street fighting. There is a lot of fighting in this book, and his neck wound experiences made me uncomfortable. Finally, the escape from Spain - well, it was sort of exciting.

Three stars.

خدا رحمت کنه جورج اورول را. این کتابش درباره‌ی شرکت در جنگ داخلی اسپانیا است. جورج اورول کاملا چپ بوده و این چیزی است که شاید اگر کسی فقط کتاب‌های 1984 و قلعه‌ی حیوانات را از او خوانده باشد برایش عجیب باشد. در واقع دیدگاه ضدکمونیستی اورول نه از دیدگاه راست‌گرایان و سرمایه‌داری که از نگاه یک مومن به آرمان‌های چپی است که از خیانتی که کمونیست‌ها در حق این آرمان‌ها می‌کنند خشمگین است.
این کتاب از این لحاظ یک شاهکار است که شمع و گل و پروانه و بلبل یک جا جمعند؛ نوشته‌ای از جورج اورول، یکی از صادق‌ترین نویسندگان دنیا [و مگه می‌شه نویسنده‌ای صادق نباشه و محبوب باشه؟] وترجمه‌ی عزت‌الله فولادوند، که قبلا از او کتاب آمریکایی آرام را خوانده ب��دم و برای من تبدیل به یک برند شده و اگر ببینم کتابی ترجمه‌ی اوست می‌فهمم که با اصل جنس طرفم، و چاپ انتشارات خوارزمی، که دست گرفتن کتابی از این انتشارات نیمی از لذت خواندن کتاب است. هر چه خوبان همه دارند، تو یک جا داری.
اما پس چرا به کتاب سه ستاره داده‌ام؟ یکی از دلایلش این است که موضوع کتاب چندان دغدغه‌ی ذهنی من نیست، مگر البته صداقت نویسنده و بیان واقعی ماجراها؛ و دیگر این که کتاب خصلت روزنامه‌نگارانه و مصرفی دارد، یعنی که متناسب با زمان خودش است و بیشتر در جواب تبلیغات کمونیست‌هایی است که در هنگام کارزار بر علیه فرانکوی فاشیست، شاید نه از پشت ولی به هر حال به بخشی از جبهه‌ی خودی خنجر زدند.
از دلایل دیگر این که در کتاب از گروه‌های متعدد چپ‌گرایی نام برده می‌شود که اسامی شبیه هم دارند و شاید فقط از یک متخصص چپ‌شناس بربیاید که بتواند بین آن‌ها تمییز بگذارد.
به هر حال آن چه که این کتاب را برای من مهم می‌کند صداقت نویسنده و شجاعت او در پریدن در عمق حوادث و دل به دریا زدن او دارد. کسی که از کشوری آرام و محافظه‌کار بیرون می‌آید و به خاطر منافع طبقه‌ی کارگر در جبهه‌ها بر علیه فاشیست‌ها می‌جنگد و با این حال فروتنانه از این که در هنگام نبرد در آرزوی بازگشت به آسایش و آرامش است خود را سرزنش می‌کند. رحمت خداوند بر او باد

This book is justly famous for its disillusioned account of how the Communist Party—in its eagerness to defeat Franco--betrayed the successful anarchist experiment in Catalonia for the sake of expedience, how it executed and imprisoned its anarchist and socialist comrades for the sake of a temporary alliance with the bourgeois.

I found all this very interesting, but have to admit that the real reason I liked the book so much was for its gritty account of war on the cheap, where guns are poor, marksmanship is worse, and the lack of food, matches and candles is more important than any threat by the enemy. In spite of the generally poor marksmanship, however, Orwell did manage to get himself shot in the neck, and his first-hand account of what it is like to be wounded is vivid and completely absorbing.

The only thing that keeps this book from being superb is its detailed discussion of each of the various left-wing parties and their responsibility—or lack of responsibility--for the internecine battles on the streets of Barcelona that contributed to the subsequent purges, arrests, and imprisonments. Orwell clearly realizes that this account may be a problem for his narrative, for he apologizes for its length, arguing that previous accounts in the international press have been so deceptive that it has become necessary to set the record straight. Now, however, more than seventy-five years later, such a precise accounting is indeed unnecessary--at least for the general reader--and Orwell's book suffers as a result.

Deixant de banda tot el que he après sobre el meu país en aquest llibre, i tot el contingut polític (que ja havia llegit en llibres que analitzen aquest llibre), m'han sorprès dues coses:
- la primera, descobrir l'humor anglès i l'ironia d'Orwell. M'ha fet riure i tot!
- la segona, veure tantes idees germinals de 1984, tantes vivències i fets que clarament el van inspirar. Esgarrifa una mica!

Una lectura molt recomanable, amb uns annexos una mica més pesats però força interessants.