A Short Review of ‘Homage to Catalonia’
George Orwell could have been killed twice in the Spanish Civil War. Once when he was shot in the throat by General Franco’s fascist forces; then when he was hunted by official Communist agents who, with the backing of Stalin’s Soviet Union, stabbed the revolution in the back and imprisoned, tortured and killed leading leftists and anarchists who were ostensibly on the same Republican side. Orwell learned the hardest way that the war against fascism in Spain was also a civil war against Stalinism.
A nice little review of what remains the best book to come out of the Spanish Civil War that is especially important to remember as the far right of the here and now seeks to push us into the same kind of horror here in the US. We also need to remember that these were the experiences that led to his other classics “Animal Farm” and “1984”.
For similar reasons, I also recommend, yet again, that everyone here at the LGF should read Antony Beevor’s “The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–39” The 2006 edition of the book is significantly revised and to be preferred.
We ignore the history & lessons of Spain’s tribulations at our peril.