George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is undoubtedly one of the best historical memoirs of the Spanish Civil War in any language. He was struck by a 7 mm (25 gm) copper-plated Spanish Mauser Bullet. . The price turned out to be more than just Spain’s famous gold reserves, but submission to Soviet-Communist interference in Spanish politics. Some of these misfortunes he dismissed as simply the lot of soldiers in war. The part of these well-trained and battle-tested internacionales in saving Madrid was valiant and highly visible, fueling Communist propaganda that only their brand of disciplined subordination could possibly oppose Franco. Harry Milton observed that the bullet had entered his throat, making a neat hole without much bleeding and that he had bitten down hard on his lip. Shocked, Orwell himself felt endangered by his association to the POUM and was compelled to flee the country. Orwell had endured a brief taste of the “nightmare atmosphere” of a police state in 1937, when he was fighting for the Republic against General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Get our print magazine for just $20 a year. Nobody said “Señor” or “Don” or even “Usted”; everyone called everyone else “Comrade” or “Thou” … In outward appearance, it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Mc Nair brought him to the Lenin Barracks and introduced him to the division commander, Jose Rivera. When the police force came to seize the Exchange, CNT guards resisted. Later, he would learn that certain setbacks, such as the lack of up-to-date rifles and artillery, were not at all coincidental. George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War: A brush with death, James L. Franklin From his text we can construct a narrative of the events as they unfolded. Perhaps contusion to the larynx without perforation might account for the bleeding and his recollection that every time “I breathed too hard the blood bubbled out from my mouth.”. The revolution not only posed an alternative vision to address these concerns — it actually achieved alternative modes of self-managed and democratic organization, and began sorting out the kinks of a new system aimed at the old unquenchable idea: a more egalitarian, more libertarian society. Homage renders a sober assessment of the Communist role in the series of counterrevolutionary events: The general swing to the Right dates from about October-November 1936, when the USSR began to supply arms to the Government and power began to pass from the Anarchists to the Communists … [T]he Russians were in a position to dictate terms. In this video, I look at how the Spanish Civil War shaped the literature of the modernist movement. The photograph embodies the brutality of the wars of the twentieth century and starkly depicts the frailty of the human condition and the unanswerable questions we have about human consciousness at the moment of death. Perhaps the one thing he did get from his deployment among the volunteer militia was a deeper appreciation for the nuances of the Spanish situation: For weeks on end, during the dull period when nothing was happening … I found myself in the middle of a political discussion that practically never ended … [I]n the stuffy blackness of dug-outs, behind the parapet in the freezing midnight hours, the conflicting party “lines” were debated over and over. In the words of a recent biographer, Gordon Bowker, "the people that had effaced that reality, the Soviet Communists, now had an implacabl… The army uprising, however, broke out just days before the torch lighting ceremony. Though Orwell recalls the mutually defensive stances of the POUM and the Civil Guards, it was not so in other parts of the city. But heroic as the militias had been in resisting the initial uprising, their prospects in a conventional war against Franco and his fascist backers were overwhelmingly dim. "No one who was in Spain during the months when people still believed in the revolution will ever forget that strange and moving experience. At the hospital he noted they used what he believed to be the latest practice of keeping wounds open, but protected from flies with “butter-muslin.” He remained at Tarragona for three or four days and was met there by his wife, Eileen, and Major Georges Kopp, his commandant and friend. This social revolution on the Republican side of Spain was carried out furthest and lasted longest in Catalonia, and by the time of Orwell’s arrival in Barcelona at the close of 1936, an estimated three-quarters of the Catalan economy was humming under worker self-management. Generally, the first suranme is the only one used. Moreover, Orwell aside, almost nothing has been written by former members of the ILP group. Only half-successful, rebelling army garrisons were resisted in key cities like Barcelona and Madrid — not, by and large, by the Republican Government, but by the spontaneous resistance of Spain’s well-organized workers and sympathetic police. From the sanatorium, he would walk into Barcelona in the mornings to attend clinics at the General Hospital. As soon as the rising broke out the organized town workers replied by calling a general strike and then by demanding — and, after a struggle, getting — arms from the public arsenals. Robert Capa’s “The Fallen Soldier” is the iconic photograph of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). In its pages, he reflects on the indelible impression of being, for the first time, “in a town where the working class was in the saddle”: Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists … Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black … There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. Kropp closes his letter expressing his favorable opinion of Doctors Grau and Barraquer. Five months after he had been shot, he was also able to report that he had regained control of his arm. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning.”. He reports that he “never had a moment’s pain from the bullet wound itself.”, In Homage to Catalonia, he reports that the doctors were “able men” and there was no shortage of drugs or equipment. In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell admits how readily he bought into what he called the “News Chronicle–New Statesman version of the war,” the over-simplification pitting freedom against fascism. Eileen was not arrested but it was clear that she was being watched so that she could lead them to Orwell when he returned. It looked like what leaders on all sides had been dreading: a civil war within the Civil War. Having made his assessment, Orwell explains his decision to “fight Fascism” by enlisting: All this was queer and moving. He met with John Mc Nair in the Executive Building of the POUM (the Workers Party of Unification). "One of the officers was up a ladder searching the bookshelves when he found George Orwell’s Animal Farm. This was always a dangerous time, because we had the dawn at our backs, and if you stuck your head above the parapet it was clearly outlined against the sky . Then with his head facing forward, the bullet entry point might appear to be on the left of the midline. In December 1936, Orwell traveled to Spain, where he joined one of the groups fighting against General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. At the start of the tumultuous events of July 1936, which plunged the country into civil war, farm and factory had been spontaneously commandeered by armed and organized workers across vast swaths of Spain. If they had not acted spontaneously and more or less independently it is quite conceivable that Franco would never have been resisted. He reflected that he had never heard of survival from a bullet penetrating the middle of the neck and wondered how long one would live if the carotid artery was cut. Behind the lines, the government gradually asserted control over industry and trade in what was labeled a “policy of pin-pricks.” Every move, whether to break up a militia into the Popular Army, or to put some vital collectivized industry under central control, was carried out ostensibly in the name of the war effort. On the evening he returned to Barcelona, he went immediately to the Continental Hotel where Eileen was staying and found his wife sitting in the lounge. But at the time, he reflected that “this period seemed to me to have been one of the most futile of my whole life.” Orwell had joined up to fight fascism, but “as yet…had scarcely fought at all.”. Barcelona barricade, 1937. The militias were built on democratic organizing principles, electing officers from their ranks who held no special privileges nor received higher pay. It was only once he’d left the front that he began to understand just how valuable his time there had been. Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen-name, George Orwell, was born in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. The centralization of worker-run industries was continued. At six feet, three inches, Orwell stood out among his fellow troops. Reviewing the history of Orwell’s bullet wound, neurologist Ryan Jacobson localized the injury to the lateral cord of the right brachial plexus.11 Injury to the lateral cord of the brachial plexus would account for the sensations Orwell experienced in the fingers of his hand. There is very little doubt that these terms were, in substance, “Prevent revolution or you get no weapons,” and that the first move against the revolutionary elements, the expulsion of the POUM from the Catalan Generalite, was done under orders from the USSR … [T]he Communist parties of all countries can be taken as carrying out Russian policy, and it is not denied that the Communist Party was the chief mover first against the POUM, later against the Anarchists and against [the left-wing] section of the Socialists, and, in general, against a revolutionary policy. As an indictment of authoritarianism and misinformation, it marks a turning point in Orwell’s immeasurably influential literary career. Aided by Hitler and Mussolini, Franco’s Nationalists conducted their “holy crusade” in the name of order and a return to tradition against the Republic. Periodicals like the CNT’s “Solidaridad Obrera” freely disseminated revolutionary ideology to a highly conscious working class. The Poum militia in Barcelona 1936 with Orwell in the background; he describes several days and nights spent defending its headquarters from the roof of the nearby Poliorama theatre in 1937. Homage contains all of this, but is above all a love letter to this revolution as Orwell came to know it. There, he confronted the rapidly changing nature of life in Republican Spain: Everyone who has made two visits, at intervals of months, to Barcelona during the war has remarked upon the extraordinary changes that took place in it … the revolutionary atmosphere had vanished. Orwell fell to the ground, violently striking his head. About the Author. At best, the loyalist government could be described as reluctantly complicit in arming the workers, and now had to hold together these contentious sides against a common foe with clear military advantages. Today, his path through one portion of the war is remembered by a trail of recreated fortifications. Together they arranged for him to be transferred to the Sanatorium Maurin. “The worst was that my voice gave out almost at once and it was only by violent straining that I could produce a sort of croak.” It was all in vain and Kopp remained in prison for months. The unfinished coup having split the country in two, the stage was set for a protracted military conflict. “Orwell” was the name of a small river in Suffolk that evoked memories of an idyllic childhood.3 Eric was the name that he used with friends and family throughout his life. His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman. All the same, Homage is more than just a journalist’s hasty attempt to set the record straight. Under the Republican government preceding the civil war, union membership swelled into the millions, with the anarcho-syndicalist CNT dominating in Catalonia. The two factions agreed only on the ultimate priority that the war must be won, and to that end, the government side began to seek centralized command of the war and the redistribution of worker militias into their newly formed Popular Army. He noted that “every time I breathed too hard the blood bubbled out of my mouth.” After a horrific ambulance ride to a hospital (a hurriedly constructed wooden hut) in Siétamo, he arrived later at a crowded hospital in Barbastro. As May 1, International Workers’ Day, was approaching, Barcelona’s labor unions had planned a massive demonstration of solidarity with the revolution. He had wanted to join the International Brigade, but since the Independent Labor Party (ILP) had provided him with a letter of introduction, he felt obligated once in Barcelona to visit their representative. First, the hospitals near the front were used as clearing stations, and no care was rendered except to those that were too badly wounded to be moved. First published in 1938, Orwell’s tribute to the region recounts his real-life experiences living in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, from his arrival on the Christmas of 1936 to his escape in the summer of 1937, as he was a target of the Stalinist secret police.. The timing of the author’s leave to Barcelona is one of those remarkable accidents of history. From the outset of Russian aid, Communist policy in Spain, answerable to Moscow, called for the elimination of rivals to Stalin’s own authoritarian brand of communism. In the rugged isolation of Spain’s poor mountain villages, early anarchist adherents pioneered the organizational forms that later shaped the Civil War-era trade unions and peasant assemblies. The Barcelona fighting had given the [Republican] government the long-wanted excuse to assume fuller control of Catalonia. The revolutionary spirit of Barcelona was waning by the day, and the old divisions of society rising back to the surface. 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