Greg’s Reviews > Homage to Catalonia > Status Update

It is a horrible thing to have to enter the details of inter-party polemics; it is like diving into a cesspool. But it is necessary to try and establish the truth, so far as is possible.

What the devil was happening, who was fighting whom and who was winning, was at first very difficult to discover. The people of Barcelona are so used to street-fighting and so familiar with the local geography that they know by a kind of instinct which political party will hold which streets and which buildings. A foreigner is at a hopeless disadvantage.

It is not a nice thing to see a Spanish boy of fifteen carried down the line on a stretcher...and to think of the sleek persons in London and Paris who are writing pamphlets to prove that this boy is a Fascist in disguise. One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

It appeared that even in Barcelona there were hardly any bullfights nowadays; for some reason all the best matadors were Fascists.