# Homage to Catalonia By George Orwell **URL:** **By** Bruce A. Ramsey **Published:** May 1, 1974 --- “He was not well known; none of his five published books had been best sellers, and it was more than a decade before he was to write Nineteen Eighty-Four, his greatest work.” This is the story of a revolution that devoured its children. It is a story of hardship, bloodshed and strife, and one man's disillusionment. In 1936 Francisco Franco led an attempted coup d'état against Spain's leftist government, an event which sparked off the Spanish Civil War. Franco mobilized the power of the military leadership, conservative industrialists and the Established Church, while the Loyalist government mobilized the anarchist and socialist trade unions. The war quickly became an international issue, polarizing the intelligentsia of Europe and America. Nazi Germany sent planes to Franco; Soviet Russia sent guns to the Loyalists. It was to be a prologue to World War II in Europe. George Orwell entered the picture six months after the outbreak of war, in December 1936. He was not well known; none of his five published books had been best sellers, and it was more than a decade before he was to write _Nineteen Eighty-Four_, his greatest work. He came with a vague notion of writing articles; instead, he joined a Loyalist unit and was sent off to the Aragon front to fight the Fascists. Because of his socialist affiliations in England, Orwell joined the troops of the Party of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.), the smallest of the three Loyalist parties, and vaguely Trotskyist in orientation. The others were the Anarchists, who had the allegiance of the vast majority in Catalonia (the Spanish province which contains Barcelona), and the Communists, which dominated the Loyalist government in Valencia, and had the most powerful connections abroad. Each party had its own troops at the front. Orwell served on the Aragon Front near Zarazoga from December 1936 until April 1937, returning to Barcelona on leave. There he witnessed the first inter-party street fighting, between the Communists and the other factions, which the Communists were to blame on the P.O.U.M. Saddened by the experience, Orwell returned to the front, where he was shot through the throat by Fascist gunfire. He was evacuated to Barcelona, only to find that the P.O.U.M. had been suppressed by the government, and that anyone with P.O.U.M. papers was liable to be arrested and shot. Orwell escaped into France and returned to England, where he wrote _Homage to Catalonia_, published in 1938. It is a vivid account of the sights, sounds and feel of the war in Spain, as well as a record of the political infighting on the Loyalist side. While the Fascists remain in the background, Orwell carefully examines the positions of each party and records his own political evolution. It must be remembered that Orwell writes as a socialist and remains a socialist. Yet he is more of an emotional socialist than a doctrinaire Marxist; he is fighting for "democracy" and "common decency" rather than the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Thus his book is remarkably free of jargon. Its value lies not in its deep analysis, but in its fundamental honesty and clarity of vision. Thus, few libertarians will be surprised at Orwell's innocent discovery that the Communists are in fact opposed to any meaningful kind of social revolution. Yet it was that discovery that enabled him to write _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ more than a decade later. _Reviewed by BRUCE A. RAMSEY / Political Philosophy (232 pages) / BFL Price $1.95_