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Homage to Catalonia

by George Orwell, Lionel Trilling (Introduction)

4.13 · rating details · 5,341 ratings · 469 reviews

In 1936 Orwell went to Spain to report on the Civil War and instead joined the fight against the Fascists. This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s experiences. Introduction by Lionel Trilling.

Paperback, 232 pages

Published October 22nd 1980 by Harcourt, Inc. (first published 1938)

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Jul 04, 2008

Chris rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: journalists

Orwell left England in 1936 and spend six months fighting fascism in Spain - actually fighting fascism, like, throwing grenades and living in trenches, and being shot at, and crawling across 'no man's land' in the mud. He was a member of P.O.U.M., 'Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista', or the Workers Party of Marxist Unification. Orwell was not a Marxist, but a strident opponent of Franco's fascist forces. The book, like his 'Road to Wigan Pier', is a collection of Orwell's observations told ...more

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Oct 08, 2009

Steve rated it

HEADLINE: For students, here the politics is explained.

For you students who have this great book imposed upon you in a syllabus, here is the best help I can give you with regard to Chapters V and XI, which are in some editions included only as Appendices.

It is interesting to note that at the outset Orwell himself was nonplussed by the alphabet soup of the political situation in Spain. At first he was at a loss when confronted with the idea of right wing communism as you p...more

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Aug 26, 2007

David rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Deluded leftists.

A glimpse into a pocket of war as various conflicting powers (try to) take claim of a newly set anarchist state, following a popular uprising in 1936 Spain.

George Orwell conscientiously; and later coincidently, sets himself among the more anarchist faction (P.O.U.M), working his way through the ranks of a rag-tag organisation battling off Fascism (Franco), Communism (directed by Russia), the Nazis and British imperial interest.

Tedious and uneventful trench warfare add to ...more

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Jan 30, 2008

Matt Carrington rated it

Shelves: read-in-2008

The classic Orwell memoir. Orwell seamlessly blends his experiences as a soldier on the Communist front during the Spanish Civil War with shrewd insight into the political machinations fueling Spanish revolution (and the resulting apathy of the non-Fascist world). One of the better books to demonstrate how wars are fought by the poor and ignorant, while controlled by the obtuse and powerful. A timely read given the strong parellels to the current US Middle East policy.

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Aug 29, 2011

Lorenzo rated it

Shelves: aaa-my-library, english, 2011-readings

Reading anything by Orwell is always worth and rewarding.
And "Homage to Catalonia" makes no exception.
As someone pointed out somewhere the way Orwell understood and described Spain surpasses by far what Hemingway wrote pretty much in the same years about the same country.

But while Hemingway spent his Spanish time in a sort of cosmopolitan way drinking, waking up late, watching bullfighting, munching tapas and generally having fun (Fiesta!), Orwell was freezing in ...moreReading anything by Orwell is always worth and rewarding.
And "Homage to Catalonia" makes no exception.
As someone pointed out somewhere the way Orwell understood and described Spain surpasses by far what Hemingway wrote pretty much in the same years about the same country.

But while Hemingway spent his Spanish time in a sort of cosmopolitan way drinking, waking up late, watching bullfighting, munching tapas and generally having fun (Fiesta!), Orwell was freezing in trenches, picking up cigarettes butts in the mud, being assaulted by rats, dealing with faulty guns and being hunted down for no reason in a hostile Barcelona.

Now, nobody forced Orwell to have that kind of unpleasant experience and he later reckoned how he was pretty much a fool in volunteering among the socialist forces in the Spanish Civil War, but let's be frank: could you picture Ernest doing the same without asking for a bloody daiquiri?
The toll of that bell didn't really sound.

The less convincing part of this book is actually the first one when Orwell reports about his -rather modest- military actions with that sort of detailed step by step account that I don't really like although we knew he had a diary with him so that we expect how every tiny detail here is true.
But this doesn't happen very often and the most clever and interesting part of this book are the ones in which Orwell struggles with cold, lack of hygiene, disillusion and boredom. Something that another idealist like his countryman Lord Byron would have never mentioned.
Orwell's observations on the people who fought (or better waited) with him in the trenches are also very good in pointing out the absolute naivete of the whole combatants, mostly teenagers coming from peasant families which were hardly able to communicate with the foreigners fighting at their side and for the same cause.

And then come the hectic Barcelona days and the whole book stands up on a higher level.
What we have is now Orwell at his very best. And writing about real paranoids, not fictional ones, in a way that wallops master Kafka. What I can say is that I have not only read but felt the feverish state of Orwell and a whole town where good and evil, friends and enemies got suddenly all mixed up with no apparent logic.

This is a book to reread and to hold in a visible shelf.
This is a book that teaches you something in its own way and will always do.
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Sep 14, 2011

Bill Kerwin rated it

Shelves: history, biography

This book is justly famous for its disillusioned account of how the Communist Party—in its eagerness to defeat Franco's fascism--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 ...more

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Aug 09, 2011

Will James added it

For some reason I was expecting 'Homage to Catalonia' to remind me of Stephen Crane's 'The Red Badge of Courage', despite Crane's book being fiction, but I was wrong. While both deal with the effects of civil war, Orwell's memoir of his time in the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) probably captures better the boredom and frustrations of war, as opposed to the action and excitement of it.

With great English understatement, Orwell manages to convey a great deal of the complexities and often unintended hu...more

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Mar 19, 2009

Kevin rated it

Review – Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Homage to Catalonia is the best war book I’ve ever read. It is both entertaining and honest, and has little to do with the partisan bickering that composes much of the book’s background.

Orwell went to Barcelona in 1936 to report on the Spanish Civil War. He was so struck with the progress of the workers’ revolution there, the camaraderie and the hope, that he decided this state of affairs was worth defending, and enlisted with ...moreReview – Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Homage to Catalonia is the best war book I’ve ever read. It is both entertaining and honest, and has little to do with the partisan bickering that composes much of the book’s background.

Orwell went to Barcelona in 1936 to report on the Spanish Civil War. He was so struck with the progress of the workers’ revolution there, the camaraderie and the hope, that he decided this state of affairs was worth defending, and enlisted with a militia unit. His unit soon went to the front, where it stood nearly idle for several months and did little fighting. The unit returned several months later to what seemed like a different city, in the throes of inter-party fighting as the Russian-backed communists attempted to take control of the war effort. Orwell’s unit returned briefly to the front, but while he was hospitalized (due to a bullet caught in the neck,) its members were declared illegal, and he was forced to flee the country.

As American readers, most of us are more familiar with the Spanish Civil War through Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Unlike that self-important, posturing brick of a novel, Homage to Catalonia paints an affectionate portrait of a brave, but naïve, effort that was doomed from the start by international intrigue. Orwell’s affable co-combatants are poorly equipped, crawling with lice, and little interested in fighting, which is lucky because they’re left on an immobile front where if the food isn’t great, the cigarette ration is at least adequate.

The power of this book is in its indictment of the foreign press and the hypocrisy of international communism. Each did its part to muck up the war effort and betray the people it purported to defend, and Orwell explains as clearly as possible the complex international forces that wasted the war effort and opened the door to fascism in Spain.

This book is indeed an homage, to a brief time in a small place where equality was real, but fleeting, and to the people who were there to live this hope. It also shows us the moments when Orwell became disillusioned with communism, leading to his best known works. (It may difficult for us to imagine, but we need to keep in mind that in the 1930’s, the violence and cynicism of the U.S.S.R. were still widely unknown, and there were many active communists all over the world.) Thus, this book, in addition to being highly enjoyable, is vital to understanding a mindset now remote and alien to us, and a time we mostly know nothing about.(less)

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Feb 24, 2009

W.H. Manville rated it

· review of another edition

You don't need me to tell you that “Animal Farm,” and “1984” are George Orwell’s two best known books. I consider them his two weakest;-- further evidence that irony is the ruling principal by which God constructed the world. To my mind they are not novels but pamphlets written by one of the great political essayists of the last century. “All art,” he wrote somewhere, “is to some extent propaganda.”
Oh?
Lashing out both right and left, Orwell is tough to categorize. Whi...more You don't need me to tell you that “Animal Farm,” and “1984” are George Orwell’s two best known books. I consider them his two weakest;-- further evidence that irony is the ruling principal by which God constructed the world. To my mind they are not novels but pamphlets written by one of the great political essayists of the last century. “All art,” he wrote somewhere, “is to some extent propaganda.”
Oh?
Lashing out both right and left, Orwell is tough to categorize. While a member of the English public school class himself (even if there only on a pass), he was a lifelong scourge of caste, privilege and wealth, describing Britain as a tyrannical “family with the wrong members in control”. On the other hand, along with Bertrand Russell, he was one of the earliest major writers to see the murder veiled by the “Power to the People” platitudes so dear to Stalin and the 1930s Left.
Orwell was anti-Semitic, homo-phobic (“the pansy left”) and in the country in which Shakespeare was born, distrusted what he called “fancy writing.” Good prose, he said, “is like a window pane.” And that is what he wrote. He was an atheist who asked to be buried according to Church of England rites. So what the hell is he doing in this collection of my favorite books?
Orwell was often called “a one-man truth telling squad.” Though he fought (and was wounded) in Spain on the side of the anti-Franco left, his report on what went on there is clear-eyed, beautifully written and riveting. “Homage to Catalonia” is the only book on the Spanish Civil War that I trust.
And PS: Back in the days when George Hahn and I were two young men trying to drink the bars of Greenwich Village dry, George sub-let W. H. Auden’s book-lined St. Marks Place apartment for one summer. One evening over martinis, George took one of Orwell’s great books, “Down and Out in London and Paris” down from one of the shelves. “Dear Wystan,” he wrote in ink on the title page. “If you will re-read P.47, you will find the point explicated that you were too drunk to understand when I made it to you at the San Remo last night.” The thought I want to leave here for literary scholars is this: George rented the apartment through an agent. He and Auden never met.
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Dec 04, 2008

Johnny Waco rated it

Shelves: memoir, war

Homage to Catalonia is the fourth Orwell book I've read, after 1984, Animal Farm, and Burmese Days, and I've come to the conclusion that Orwell is an interesting, provocative writer, just not a particularly great one. Homage to Catalonia is a scattershot book, careening between political and historical analysis and personal episodes during the Spanish Civil War; without a doubt, the personal sections are much more compelling. For instance, the long (read: very long) chapter breaking down the var...more

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Jan 12, 2012

Arjun Mishra rated it

Shelves: history

I am a neophyte on Orwell, though massively impressed by him, so I am not qualified to say how important this work is on his overall work and life. This is a critical analysis of the Spanish Civil War, which can be considered a prelude to WWII and the battles that would pan out in that conflict. Spain is often forgotten as a country when discussing and studying modern Europe because it did not participate in the world wars and did not have the same development trajectory as other nations, such a...more

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Mar 05, 2011

Mark Hainds rated it

On a recent trip to visit relatives Peru, I had the pleasure of meeting a Catalan named Jordan, who married my wife's cousin. They live in Cuzco and while we stayed over at their apartment, we were able to carry on a literary discussion because his English is much better than my Spanish.

Jordan recommended I acquire two books "Homage to Catalonia" by George , and "A Poet in New York" by Federico Garcia Lorca. I am, ever so slowly, working my way through the...more

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Jun 19, 2010

Colleen rated it

Good history of Spain before WWII. I didn't realize there were so many Anarchist and Communist factions. And so little weaponry. Part of his narrative is set in the Catalonian trenches - the anti-Fascists are holed up on a mesa across from the mesa where the Fascists are holed up - neither side has heavy artillary so it's a stand-off. The actual fighting is sporadic and intense. He goes back to Barcelona to rest up and is swept up in the fighting between the workers groups and the government gua...more

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Apr 07, 2010

Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont rated it

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 sociali...moreHomage 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.(less)

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Mar 01, 2010

Billie Pritchett rated it

This is a surprising book. Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's recollections on his involvement during the Spanish Civil War in fighting against Franco's fascists. Also, he details his discovery of the differences among those who were fighting against the fascists. He severely rebukes Communists for wanting to suppress the revolutionary nature of their war--and for their authoritarian rule and being beholden to Russia. In addition, he learns about anarchism, and he becomes more sympathetic to...moreThis is a surprising book. Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's recollections on his involvement during the Spanish Civil War in fighting against Franco's fascists. Also, he details his discovery of the differences among those who were fighting against the fascists. He severely rebukes Communists for wanting to suppress the revolutionary nature of their war--and for their authoritarian rule and being beholden to Russia. In addition, he learns about anarchism, and he becomes more sympathetic to that version of socialism. He writes of 1936 when fighting and moving across the landscape:

The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a temporary and local phrase in an enormous game that is being played over the whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to have its effect on anyone who experienced it. However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word 'comrade' stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. (104)

He continues, and this too is worth quoting a large proportion:

I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risks their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all. And it was here that those few months in the militia were valuable to me. For the Spanish militias, while they lasted, were a sort of microcosm of a classless society. In that community where no one was on the make, where there was a shortage of everything but no privilege and no boot-licking, one got, perhaps a crude forecast of what the opening stages of Socialism might be like. And, after all, instead of disillusioning me it deeply attracted me. The effect was to make my desire to see Socialism established much more actual than it had been before. (108-109)

Whatever anyone thinks of Orwell's ideological leanings, the book serves as a thoughtful reflection on the banalities of war, the fragility of life,* and the importance of ideas/ideals for everyday people. ...Catalonia is a little, forgotten classic.

* I can't can't can't stress this enough, even though little attention is given to it in this review, I'm ashamed to say.(less)

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Feb 04, 2010

Andrew rated it

Goddamn I love Orwell's nonfiction. I've been wanting to read this forever and finally just got around to it. This book, which covers Orwell's time fighting against Franco with the anarcho/socialist/communist coalition during the Spanish Civil War, is great. The narrative parts cover his boredom and frustration at the front (as boring as getting shot through the neck by a fascist can be anyway) and captures some fascinating glimpses of what a worker-run society might be like. There are also a c...more

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Dec 23, 2009

Joe rated it

This book reminds me of that saying that I read somewhere about books not kissing on the first date. Is there any other author that can be read and digested as routinely as Orwell can? Who has a longer shelf life, I challenge.

On the second time around I realized how little action Orwell actually saw until his was shot in the throat by a sniper and carried out to recuperate, somehow surviving with little or no long-term injuries. I have to quibble with the rearranging of sections...more

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Nov 01, 2009

Mateo rated it

Homage to Catalonia

Here's my favorite quote from Homage:

"I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory, it was a perfect equality, and even

...more

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Oct 03, 2009

Michael rated it

The story of about six months Orwell spent as a soldier in one of the Spanish Republican militias in 1936-37. The fighting was almost nonexistent -- chiefly holding action through the winter -- and so most of the book is a dutiful chronicle of a dull time. Descriptions of lice and soldier bathroom habits are mingled with discussion of the many splinter groups of the anarchists, socialists, and other workers' parties that were trying to wrest power from both the then-current leftist government ...more

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Sep 28, 2009

Gail rated it

Shelves: 2009, memoirs, constant-reader, library-book

Orwell's clear, direct prose proves to be the perfect medium for this brief war memoir. As others have mentioned, the Spanish Civil War with its many factions is, at best, hard to understand. I did a tiny amount of research before reading the book so that I'd have at least a minimum of information on it. I think that's a good idea for anyone reading Orwell's book.

The best parts are, of course, his own experiences of the war, with its alternating boredom and fear, its cameraderie, and...more

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Oct 09, 2011

Scott Venhuizen rated it

In Homage to Catalonia Orwell recounts his personal experiences in the Spanish Civil War and also discusses the politics surrounding the conflict. I usually wouldn’t read a book of this sort, as I have never been all that interested in war – but it was Orwell so I figured I would give it a shot.

While it seems (from other reviews I have read) that people seem to prefer either the political or the personal chapters – I enjoyed them about the same.

The personal sections dea...moreIn Homage to Catalonia Orwell recounts his personal experiences in the Spanish Civil War and also discusses the politics surrounding the conflict. I usually wouldn’t read a book of this sort, as I have never been all that interested in war – but it was Orwell so I figured I would give it a shot.

While it seems (from other reviews I have read) that people seem to prefer either the political or the personal chapters – I enjoyed them about the same.

The personal sections deal mostly with Orwell’s time spent at the front and in Barcelona. The parts dealing with his experiences at the front are pretty standard – no food, bad guns, no tobacco, freezing temperatures, little sleep, and so on – the sorts of things that make me feel simultaneously thankful and terrible for being so lucky. However, the standard war stuff is made more interesting, and quite humorous, by how unbelievably unorganized yet hopeful the Spanish militiamen are. For example, they aren’t able to train with guns because the supplies are too low – so many of those at the front are 14-year-old boys using guns (only about half of which actually operate correctly) for the first time. Orwell does a fantastic job of expressing both the terror and the absurdity of war.

The 2 (long) chapters on the politics behind the conflict(s) were quite interesting – but at the same time it felt like all of the important ideas could have been expressed in about half of the time. At its simplest - the anarchists and the communists are fighting each other while also collectively trying to fight against the fascists. I thought it was interesting how closely the politics in the book mirrored those of the 2000 presidential election – Nader (the anarchists) – Gore (the communists) – and Bush (the fascists) – even to the point that by the end of the conflict all of the communists have turned on the anarchists and even accused them of being fascists in disguise (which some democrats said of Nader (that he was actually a republican) if I remember correctly). Anyway – the political stuff was interesting but would have been much better had Orwell cleaned it up a little and taken care of all the redundancies.

All in all – a good, but not great, book. After reading I think less of Orwell as a writer, but more of him as a person.
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Aug 08, 2011

Kevin rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: historical-non-fiction, the-good, political-non-fiction

This is a re-read of Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell’s autobiographical adventure of experiencing the Spanish Civil War during late 1936 till mid-1937. George Orwell managed to get to Spain to fight for the Republicans against the Fascists with the British Independent Labour Party (the ILP) as he was refused by the Communists in Britain to go and fight with the International Brigades. I think this is one of his best journalistic novels; his descriptions of the Aragon front in Catalonia are re...moreThis is a re-read of Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell’s autobiographical adventure of experiencing the Spanish Civil War during late 1936 till mid-1937. George Orwell managed to get to Spain to fight for the Republicans against the Fascists with the British Independent Labour Party (the ILP) as he was refused by the Communists in Britain to go and fight with the International Brigades. I think this is one of his best journalistic novels; his descriptions of the Aragon front in Catalonia are really incredibly descriptive, detailing the privations all the militia at that time had to endure, and also this combined with several months of really no activity on the front lines – they just held their positions and suffered from cold, louse, poor weapons, bad food, limited tobacco with nothing really going on to relieve the boredom, apart from the occasional sniping that took place between the trenches (of note, there is little to distinguish this part of the front with the 1914-18 war of trenches – a period starting to change gradually in warfare stemming from the Great War, with the first proper use of aircraft with any real effectiveness; this was the end of 'old warfare' and the entrance into the 'new').

At the start of the book, Orwell explains distinctively what was going on in Barcelona when he arrived in December 1936; he, as George Orwell considered himself a Democratic Socialist, experiences a city in the throws of Revolutionary élan, with no class distinctions in any part of the city; Red and Black flags, denoting the CNT-FAI (Anarchist-Syndicalist) colours flying everywhere and so on, and he states in the first few pages that this was a city 'with the working class in the saddle'; it seems as if he had never been so inspired to what he believed he was fighting for – against fascism and for some sort of workers democracy. A defence against the increasing dominance of fascist powers from Italy and Germany that had taken hold of Europe at this time.

However, this is a journalistic book, and later on, it becomes full of disillusionment; he witnesses first hand the May days in Barcelona, a period where the Republican Government try and take control of CNT-FAI owned collectives, the Telephone Exchange being the most notable, under influence from the Stalinist Communist Party (PSUC) to try and halt any further advance of any form of social revolution that had occurred from the first days of the attempted coup from Franco's fascists (falange). It confuses Orwell that how could two sides, despite their ideological differences in their theories of Socialism, end up causing a 'civil war within a civil war', which is how it was portrayed? How could two sides, both equally hating Franco, end up causing internecine strife that could only strengthen the opposing side? This makes Orwell think more deeply about the role of the Stalinist Communist Party, and the fact that he slowly begins to understand their role in suppressing both the Anarchists and POUM (a quasi-Trotskyist organisation of some forty thousand members) because they saw that the only way to win against the fascists was to continue their program of collectivisation and workers control, whereas the official Communist line was that of 'win the war, then social revolution'.

Orwell became wounded when he returned to the front after the May Days, with bullet through his neck, which meant he was out of action. He mentions towards the end of his journalistic novel that several of his ILP friends ended up being incarcerated in the dreadful Spanish Prisons, such as Bob Smillie, grandson of the Scottish miners leader, who later died. However, I would argue and like to suggest that Orwell, being a Socialist of a Democratic viewpoint, saw through what was actually occurring with the suppression of the POUM and CNT-FAI with the official Comintern line that a social revolution in Spain could only have weakened Stalinist Russia, that in effect he saw the Communists as actually the harbingers of, and eventual defeat, for both the Spanish workers along with its peasants whose land had been, early on the civil war, collectivised. Only a few years later, did Stalin make the Soviet-Nazi pact. A total kick in the teeth for all the old revolutionaries who had struggled and fought in Spain during this period. The accusations of 'Trotsky-Fascism' against the POUM and CNT-FAI led, maybe I would suggest, into the Second World War and the total defeat of the Spanish Civil War. And I could go on. But I will not. Old history, but still, in a modern society, holds many ramifications.
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Feb 08, 2011

blake rated it

Shelves: memoir, favorites

Orwell's account of his experience fighting for the Anarchist group POUM during the Spanish Civil War is surprisingly compelling. This is mostly due to the understated way in which he narrates the book. To be sure, he is recounting extraordinary events, but in a voice so modest and casual that you can't help but be seduced. His political analysis and truth-seeking are refreshing, and in the midst of several acrimonious factions he appears uniquely able to maintain objectivity.

Ov...more

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Apr 05, 2009

Ryan rated it

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I was unsure when I bought this if it was classified as Fiction or Non-Fiction, and I believe it's Non; really, what this book reads like is a 232-page Newsweek article. It was a bit hard to follow with all of the organizations involved with the Spanish Civil War -- and all of the loyalties and ties that were always being made and broken -- but I think that's kind of Orwell's point. Although it wasn't exactly the most "interesting" "page-turner" with gripping plot, and full o...moreI was unsure when I bought this if it was classified as Fiction or Non-Fiction, and I believe it's Non; really, what this book reads like is a 232-page Newsweek article. It was a bit hard to follow with all of the organizations involved with the Spanish Civil War -- and all of the loyalties and ties that were always being made and broken -- but I think that's kind of Orwell's point. Although it wasn't exactly the most "interesting" "page-turner" with gripping plot, and full of digressions and entire chapters of political explanations, what I liked most about this book was the fact that Orwell was actually trying to hold journalists and "Media" accountable and give an accurate portrayal of what was truly going on versus what all of the propaganda and state-sponsored organizations and their mouthpieces were saying.

What struck me off guard was the realization that this conflict was essentially a war-by-proxy, with the Russian Communists supporting one side and the German Fascists supporting another, with a whole bunch of local groups and revolting proletarians stuck somewhere in the middle. I've always been fascinated with WWII era subject matter but never fully understood how the war in Spain was basically an opening act for the Big Show. Kind of makes me wonder about the connection to things happening in the Middle East right now with us: is this an opening act in Iraq, with us helping half the Iraqis and Syria/Iran supporting the others? Is Afghanistan a proxy for a larger Muslim/Christian Crusades for the 21st Century?

I have always considered 1984 one of my favorite books, and I always thought of Orwell as such a prophet. After reading this it's funny to see how everything correlates between what he witnessed in REALITY -- his raw material for his later work -- and the world of Winston, the world of Snowball: the endless shortages of everything, the rotating alliances, the constant fright and suspicions, the role of the media, the detention without trial or even charges.

On the third to the last page, however, he states, "Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings." Really? Not only does it seem crazy that someone could return from such an experience without disillusionment and horror, but this sentence is coming from the man who ends 1984 with Winston loving Big Brother, who ends Animal Farm with the pigs turning into humans -- I always thought his world view was that of recognizing, admitting, and agreeing that the individual could be defeated, that we all have the memories of goldfish, that "the good" are few and far between. Huh. I've also read that he says 1984 and Animal Farm are written as "warnings of a future nightmare," so maybe he does possess the belief of decency but just writes this way to warn, so...

Then the book ends with a fantastic final line, as Winston returns back to England, concluding with the thought that all the people back home are, "all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs." Brilliant. I share that same fear as an American. (less)

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May 18, 2009

sdw rated it

George Orwell’s memoir of the Spanish Civil War captured one perspective of what it must have been like to be in Barcelona during the early part of the Spanish Civil War, the same way I felt the movie Reds captured what it must have been like in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution. The story line centers on a movement to and from Barcelona and various parts of the front line where Orwell fought.

Orwell mixes his personal story with his later reflection. The travel e...more

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Aug 05, 2011

Giovaennchen Lozano rated it

· review of another edition

Doloroso relato de las peripecias de un soldado voluntario durante la guerra civil española. Movidos por los ideales de la época, tras una naciente Unión Sovética, y posterior a la Primera Guerra Mundial, muchos voluntarios fueron a pelear a la guerra civil que se estaba llevando a cabo en España. Pobres españoles... pobres guerreros. Desde la perspectiva del guerrero voluntario extranjero se ven las cosas muy distintas. Recuerdo muy bien las escenas que George Orwell describe de los guerreros ...more

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Jul 13, 2011

المتمرد الموريسكي rated it

رغم أن كاتبنا شارك إلى جانب الجمهوريين أو الروخوس، إلى أنه كاتب موضوعي يعترف بأخطاء الجبهة الشعبية والشيوعيون واللاسلطويين،

قبل قراءة الكتاب يستحسن المطالعة على الأحداث التي عرفتها الساحة الدولية قبل الحرب العالمية الثانية، خصوصا الساحة الإسبانية والبريطانية

أعجبتني طريقة وصف أورويل للجنود المورو المغاربة، الذين ترجمهم المترجم بالمراكشيون. ويدلعهم أورويل ب"الأبالسة الأشقياء

أكثر ما أضحكني طريقة وصف أورويل للمجاعة والفقر في إسبانيا، وحبه لبساطتهم وسخائهم ع...more

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Apr 07, 2011

Marks54 rated it

I got this book as a follow-up to some of the other histories I had been reading that mentioned the Spanish Civil War, for example Scammell's biography of Arthur Koestler. I know of Orwell through Animal Farm and 1984, but I had heard that his nonfiction was superb and that his perspective of being an honest and reasonable socialist was worth reading. Homage to Catalonia is about his experience fighting for the POUM (Trotskyite) group for the Republic and against Franco in the war. The book i...more

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Sep 12, 2010

Adrian rated it

I read this book because I was interested in dealing with a personal account of the events of the Spanish Civil War, the topic I will be researching for my dissertation in my final year of university. I was rather intreagued by it. Orwell was able to capture the violence and suffering in his vivid and detailed descriptions of combat during the Spanish Civil War. I really appreciated his fresh, outsider perspective in discussing the politics of the conflict. I also identify myself as an anarchist...more

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Sep 13, 2009

Grace rated it

· review of another edition

Was quite tempted to follow Terry's suit and just use some great quotes here about war being bloody and beastly. I really had no idea about any of the strife between different parties supporting the Government. As Orwell says in the one of the excellent (and clear) chapters on the politics of these internal disputes, I thought the war for against fascism and for 'common decency' and that was it. The two politics chapters have been relegated to an appendix in my penguin modern classics edition - ...more

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About George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair,better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language, and a belief in democratic socialism.

Considered perhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwe...more

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Quotes from Homage to Catalonia

“On a ruinous wall I came upon a poster dating from the previous year and announcing that ‘six handsome bulls’ would be killed in the arena on such and such a date. How forlorn its faded colours looked. Where were the handsome bulls and the handsome bull-fighters now? It appeared that even in Barcelona there were hardly any bullfights nowadays - for some reason all the best matadors were Fascists.” — 3 people liked it

“The human louse somewhat resembles a tiny lobster, and he lives chiefly in your trousers. Short of burning all your clothes there is no known way of getting rid of him. Down the seams of your trousers he lays his glittering white eggs, like tiny grains of rice, which hatch out and breed families of thier own at horrible speed. I think pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate thier pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice. Glory of war indeed! In war all solderies are lousy, at the least when it is warm enough. The men that fought at Verdun, at Waterloo, at Flodden, at Senlac, at Thermopylae - every one of them had lice crawling over his testicles.” — 3 people liked it

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