I have always found the Spanish Civil War confusing. After reading Homage to Catalonia, I at least feel that I was justified in my confusion. On the surface, of course, it was a conflict between Franco’s Fascists and the democratic Republican government, but it was far more complicated than that. When Orwell arrived in Spain to fight on the Republican side with the P.O.U.M. militia, a P.S.U.C. position was pointed out to him and he was told “Those are the Socialists” to which he responded, “Aren’t we all Socialists?” He quickly learned that would be far too easy. Orwell does an admirable job of sorting out the alphabet soup of the anti-Fascist parties and militias - the P.S.U.C., C.N.T., F.A.I., P.O.U.M., U.G.T., etc., etc. The distinctions between the Anarchists, left-wing Communists, and right-wing Communists seem subtle, especially since the groups were supposedly united in their opposition to Franco, but they became critically important later. As Orwell learned, associating with the wrong party was a potentially lethal decision.

Orwell served in the P.O.U.M. (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) in 1937. He chose the party somewhat arbitrarily, based on connections he had through the British Independent Labour Party. Rather than providing a comprehensive discussion of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell focuses on his personal experiences of fighting at the front (against the Fascists). He then moves on to the May, 1937 street fighting in Barcelona, when the various Republican groups fought each other. He vividly describes the experiences of war, with the cold, dirt, and lice, the inadequate weapons, and the idealistic but inexperienced soldiers, some of whom were children. With characteristic dryness, he recounts events such as being shot in the throat by a sniper, beginning, “The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail.” I would say so.

More interesting, however, is Orwell’s growing disillusionment with the politics of the war, a story he surely did not expect to have to tell when he set out to fight Fascism. He contrasts the atmosphere in Barcelona when he first arrived in Spain, when the workers were in control and he “breathed the air of equality,” with the oppressive environment of the police state that predominated just a few months later. The Soviet-backed P.S.U.C. pinned the May fighting in Barcelona on Orwell’s P.O.U.M., an excuse to suppress the P.O.U.M. and declare it illegal. The P.O.U.M. members were accused of being “Trotsky-Fascists,” which seems like an amusing oxymoron, but with it came the implication that they had secretly aided Franco. This was disastrous for the P.O.U.M. members, many of whom were thrown in jail for months on end without being charged of anything or allowed to stand trial. Many of them “disappeared,” including Andrés Nin, the leader of the P.O.U.M., who met a horrible end at the hands of the NKVD (the Soviet secret police).

Orwell’s commanding officer and friend Georges Kopp was imprisoned in terrible conditions. Orwell recounts a poignant story of frantically rushing around the city trying to convince the authorities to read a letter that would exonerate Kopp. His Spanish was shaky and his voice even weaker after the vocal cord paralysis he suffered from his neck wound. He also ran a very real risk of being arrested himself, simply by association with Kopp and the P.O.U.M. Orwell’s room was raided and all of his books and papers confiscated by the secret police. He and his wife only barely escaped from Spain themselves.

The Spanish Civil War was a microcosm of the conflict that was developing in Europe in the 1930s, a sort of testing ground for ideologies in preparation for World War II. Many foreigners came to fight, idealistically hoping to strike out against Fascism and to support a new government which seemed to represent the working people. Unfortunately, as Orwell came to find, other doctrines were tested as well, with the terrors of the totalitarian police state that came to dominate his later writing.

n  I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards. I only twice remember even being seriously angry with a Spaniard, and on each occasion, when I look back, I believe I was in the wrong myself.n

Autobiographies and memoirs are, I think, the best books to read on vacation. Not only are they light, easy, and entertaining, but they’re usually not hard to put down. This is important because, if you’re like me, you may end up spending your whole vacation with your head buried in a book. Most valuable, however, is simply seeing how an excellent writer transforms their experiences into stories. The vague emotions of daily life, the interesting characters we encounter, the sights and sounds and smells of new places—good autobiographies direct our attention to these little details.
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In this spirit I picked up Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia to read during my trip to Seville. It was an excellent choice. It’s been a while since I’ve read Orwell, and I’d nearly forgotten what a fine writer he is. In fact, perhaps the most conspicuous quality of this book is the caliber of the prose. It is written with such grace, clarity, and ease, that I couldn’t help being constantly impressed and, I admit, extremely envious at times. The writing is direct but never blunt; the tone is personal and natural, but not chummy. The book may have been a bit too readable, actually, since I had a hard time prying myself away to go explore Seville (and a book has to be very good indeed to compete with Seville).
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There seems to be a bit of confusion about this book. Specifically, some people seem to come to it expecting to learn about the Spanish Civil War. This is a mistake; Orwell only experienced a sliver of the war, and his understanding of the political situation was limited to the infighting between various leftist groups. The events and conflicts that led up to the war, and the progress of the war itself, are for the most part unexplained. This book is, rather, a deeply personal record of his time in the Spanish militia. We learn more about Orwell’s military routine than about any battles between fascist and government forces. More light is shed on Orwell’s own political opinions than the political situation in Spain.
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If you come to the book with this in mind, it will not disappoint. His time in Spain made a deep impression on Orwell; he writes of it in a wistful and nostalgic tone, as if everything that happened occurred in a dreamy, timeless, mist-filled landscape, disconnected from the rest of his life. Characters come and go, soldiers are introduced, arrested, or killed in action; but we do not get acquainted with anyone save Orwell himself. The mood is introspective and pensive, as if it all took place in another life. Even when he is describing his friends’ imprisonment, or his experience getting shot in the neck and hospitalized, he manages to sound dispassionate and serene.
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Two chapters, however, do not fit into this characterization. These are Orwell’s analyses of the political situation in Barcelona during this time. In some books, they are published as appendices—which I think is a good choice, actually, since they interrupt the flow of the book quite a bit. Despite the abrupt change in tone and subject-matter, however, they make for valuable reading. The machinations and petty political squabbles that went on during this time are astounding. One would think that having a common enemy in Franco would be enough to unite the various factions on the Left, at least for the duration of the war. Instead, the anti-revolutionary communist party ended up declaring the pro-revolutionary communist party (of which Orwell was a member, entirely by chance) to be a fascist conspiracy, resulting in hundreds of people—people who had spent months fighting at the front—being thrown in secret prisons. Orwell himself narrowly escaped.
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Nevertheless, I think that Orwell’s analyses of the general situation in Spain should be taken with copious salt. He understands nearly everything through a quasi-Marxist lens of class-warfare, which I think fails to do justice to the complex political and cultural history of the conflict. Added to this, one gets the impression that Orwell’s command of Spanish was fairly rudimentary, which I think greatly limited his ability to understand the war. To his credit, though, Orwell does warn us about his limitations:

In case I have not said this somewhere earlier in the book I will say it now: beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact, and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events. And beware of exactly the same things when you read any other book on this period of the Spanish war.

But these are minor complaints of a book which I found to be supremely well-written and absolutely fascinating. His accounts of life at the front were possibly the best descriptions of war that I’ve ever read, with the exception of those in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. This is not because Orwell saw very much fighting; quite the opposite. Rather, he conveys a sense of the crushing boredom and the sense of futility that many soldiers must feel during a long, draw-out war. Also superb was his portrayal of political oppression, the climate of fear and backstabbing that arose during the party conflicts in Barcelona.

Perhaps most impressive, though, is that, despite all of the hardships Orwell endured, and despite the obvious injustices inflicted on both himself and his friends, he does not come across as bitter or resentful. I leave you with his words:

When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this—and however it ends the Spanish war will turn out to have been an appalling disaster, quite apart from the slaughter and physical suffering—the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings.

This is not a war — it’s a comic opera with an occasional death

Read Homage to Catalonia to experience the fog of war. Not, of course, the classic variety war fog, caused by the chaos and confusion of life threatening battle — no, it’s not that. Orwell’s war memoir allows you to experience the fog of war as he did, consisting of confusion about why various factions were fighting, an inability to communicate effectively because he didn’t speak the language, mind numbing boredom melded to physical discomfort as he languished on an inactive front, and a stupefying alphabet soup (POUM, PSUC, UCT, FAI, etc.) of competing and infighting factions fighting each other instead of Franco and the Fascists.

I don’t recommend this book for a better understanding of the Spanish Civil War. Orwell didn’t have a terribly clear understanding of what was going on, and admits as much in the book. He was motivated by two things — he knew that he wanted to fight the Fascists (he said he had determined to kill at least one fascist, that everyone should kill at least one fascist), and he knew that his sympathies lay with the Spanish working class, and against any who hurt their interests, be they Fascist or Soviet. But his ignorance of both the language and the history of the conflict impeded him even in these straight forward motivations.

The best reason to read Homage to Catalonia is to observe the genesis of Orwell’s other great books. The experiences he describes, watching the actions and betrayals of the Soviets against his comrades are clearly the generating seeds of Animal Farm. And his observations of the functioning of propaganda in and around this conflict just as clearly inspired 1984. Homage to Catalonia contains the key to those masterpieces.

This is George Orwell's vivid account of his six-month (from December 1936 to June 1937) direct involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Other than recounting action-packed combative episodes on the war frontier and treacherous street-fighting scenes in Barcelona, the author also gives a clear-eyed analysis of the mind-boggling multi-faction political strife that prevailed. This essentially boils down to a three-sided struggle between the pro-Franco Fascists (prone to feudalism), the Russian-commissar-controlled Republican government (with bourgeois tendencies) and the revolutionary working-class organizations. He also explains candidly why he thought that the surreptitious manoeuvres of the capitalistic European powers were at least part of the cause for the predictable failure of the Spanish democratic revolution.

This factual non-fiction account reads much like gripping fiction, thanks to Orwell's fluid style of writing. It is as educational as it is informative.

The one thing that sticks with me is the compliment that Orwell pays to the Spanish people. It makes me want to visit Spain and learn more about Spanish culture.

"I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards..... They have, there is no doubt, a generosity, a species of nobility that do not really belong to the twentieth century."

Before 1984, there was this cautionary tale about the dangers of Stalinist authoritarianism taking over leftist movements. It's a personal tale of the author's misadventures in the Spanish civil war, but there's also of course a deeper political point. The tragedy of how the idealism against fighting fascism becomes betrayed. Something that is consistently misinterpreted from Orwell/Blair's writings, is that despite what happened he always remained a democratic socialist. Future generations of leftists should take note.

n  “All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”n

George Orwell is one of my favourite writers. 1984 and Animal Farm were game-changers for me when I first picked them up at 12 years old, and they fostered an interest in politics that would stay with me for the rest of my life. Homage to Catalonia never quite affected me in the same way, but I decided it was time to do a reread of it as an adult. In July, I will be visiting Catalonia-- again, my first time doing so as an adult --so it seemed especially appropriate.

Orwell is a great writer, but it's just a shame that the material here is not that exciting. I found it interesting reading about how his experiences fighting Franco and the fascists during the Spanish Civil War shaped his personal and political beliefs; it's just that his extensive detailing of trench life is repetitive and largely uneventful.

The place where Orwell was stationed actually saw very little action. He describes a bunch of raggedy boys stood around shivering in the cold, smoking any cigarettes they could get hold of, and mostly just waiting for something to happen. All Quiet on the Western Front documents trench warfare - the filth, the cold, the rats - and it is a far more compelling account. Here, it gets quite tedious, even with Orwell's accessible and conversational style.

It's not just a memoir, though. He also attempts to explain the history of the conflict, and separate out the different groups involved. He explains how the Anarchists and Communists were in conflict with one another but were, in this case, technically on the same side against Franco. How well Orwell understands this history is not clear, and his explanation of all the political differences is rather convoluted (he packs a lot of information into a couple of chapters), especially when he turns his attention to the trade unions involved.

What it is possible to gather from the complex web that Orwell portrays is that the political landscape at this time was a complete mess. He often uses his trademark humour to comment on the ridiculousness of the war, and it was indeed a ridiculous situation. I did some outside reading on the Spanish Civil War, and it is easy to see why Orwell's two chapters of background info are lacking. It was such a complex conflict that had in part been building for close to a hundred years.

One of my favourite aspects of the book - and, in truth, probably why I like Orwell quite a lot - is that he never really portrays any person as his enemy. His enemy remains fascism throughout. He speaks highly of those he meets and claims that while his memories of Spain were "most evil" he had “very few bad memories of Spaniards.” He was, as far as I can tell, a humanist. And in the midst of all that chaos, that was no small thing.

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El libro tiene un evidente interés, incluso diría que es un privilegio que haya quedado para la historia un testimonio en primera persona de las vivencias como miliciano durante la Guerra Civil española de uno de los grandes genios de la historia de la literatura.

No obstante, yo me esperaba algo más, quizá porque tenía las expectativas muy altas, al ser un libro de uno de mis escritores favoritos. Se me ha hecho farragoso en algunos momentos y no tan apasionante como esperaba. Aun así merece la pena leerlo y poder apreciar el punto de vista de un extranjero que vino a España a combatir en la Guerra Civil en el lado republicano.

I was quite impressed with Orwell's style in this book. I won't retell the story as plenty of others have done so already here.

It's almost as if the reader is sitting with Orwell listening to him relate his adventures with little diversions to explain the broader situation. The voice is very much that of a relatively well educated middle-class British idealist of the early 20th century. It is earnest, honest and strives to be as clear as possible.

In the end, Orwell basically admits to having let his ideals get him into something he didn't understand. Perhaps because the situation is finally not easy to understand, even when looking back on it. He does not regret what he has done. Nor does he believe that that Spanish civil war is for naught. Rather he seems to have lost a little more faith in human kind while still wanting the best. He has learned from the events but has avoided cynicism. An honourable man. He died too young.

I found this memoir-like book surprisingly interesting and readable in terms of his direct experience in the Spanish Civil War. I think George Orwell didn't try to be a hero there since he himself was gunned down by a shot through his throat one morning. He simply wrote, "The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail" (Chapter X, pp. 143-4)

However, his valor didn't diminish and he still kept writing based on his political ideology. Therefore, while reading his lively words, it's like you're in the war yourself and thus we can't help admiring how he narrated his thought & ideas fearlessly. This obviously has since signified his unique character and integrity in this chaotic world.

Linguistically, reading it has also helped me learn some new adjectives ended with -ish, for instance, longish, sweetish, greenish, sheepish, hellish, darkish, etc. for the first time.

Another inspirational book from Orwell, and another that proves he wasn't an armchair philosopher, but was ready to "fight for common decency" when he felt it was demanded of him. Many others might have answered that call, if it hadn't been for the obfuscating approach to the whole war of the British press. Things haven't changed much today, they're just more subtle. Homage to Catalonia recounts Orwell's experiences living and fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and beyond the fascinating details and insights he provides into the conduct and nature of that conflict, his observations ring true for conflict more widely, as I discovered time and time again during the Yugoslav Wars. An absolute must for anyone interested in the 20th century, and war in general.

George Orwell struck me as an extremely honest and sincere recorder of his war experiences in Spain in 1937. He showed himself a brave and fearless warrior for the good cause, fighting the Franco troops in the desolate mountain region in the northern province of Aragon. This is what he writes on the last page of his account after he succeeded to escape to France from Spain, seriously wounded and a wanted man. “This war, in which I played so ineffectual a part, has left me with memories that are mostly evil, and yet I do not wish that I had missed it. When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this - and however it ends, the Spanish war wil turn out to have been an appalling disaster, quite apart from the slaugher and physical suffering - the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings.”
I think it is safe to say that, without his Spanish civil war experiences, George Orwell would never have written ‘Animal Farm’ or ‘1984’. Reading ‘Homage to Catalonia’ was a special experience, because I thought he spoke straight from his heart. An exceptional man!

He had come to Spain to write newspaper articles, but he joined the militia instead, because at the time the only conceivable thing to do was to fight against Fascism.
Homage to Catalonia is Orwell’s account of those gruesome months he spent fighting for what he believed in.