Homage to Catalonia

"This was in late December 1936, less than seven months ago as I write, and yetit is a period that has already receded into enormous distance. Later events have obliterated it much more completely than they have obliterated 1935, or 1905, for that matter. I had come to Spain with some notion of writingnewspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because atthat time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolutionwas still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning itprobably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period wasending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona wassomething startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically everybuilding of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with redflags ow with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties;almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here andthere were being systematically demolished by gangs of workman. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black.Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal.Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobodysaid 'Sen~or' or 'Don' ort even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tippinghad been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my firstexperience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip alift-boy. 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 andblack. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls inclean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look likedaubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town wherecrowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it wasthe aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outwardappearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceasedto exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there wereno 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-classclothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. All this wasqueer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in someways I did not not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also, I believed that things were as they appeared,that this was really a workers' State and that the entire bourgeoisie had eitherfled, been killed or voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did notrealise that great numbers of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low anddisguising themselves as proletarians for the time being. Together with all this there was something of the evil atmosphere of war. Thetown had a gaunt untidy look, roads and buildings were in poor repair, the streets at night were dimly lit for fear of air-raids, the shops were mostlyshabby and half-empty. Meat was scarce and milk practically unobtainable,there was a shortage of coal, sugar and petrol, and a really serious shortageof bread. Even at this period the bread-queues were often hundreds of yardslong. Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful.There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low;you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except thegypsies. #Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future,a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the barbers' shops were Anarchist notices (the barberswere mostly Anarchists) solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves. In the streets were coloured posters appealing to prostitutes to stop beingprostitutes. To anyone from the hard-boiled, sneering civilization of the English-speaking races there was something rather pathetic in the literalnesswith which these idealistic Spaniards took the hackneyed phrase of revolution. At that time revolutionary ballads of the naivest kind, all about theproletarian brotherhood and the wickedness of Mussolini, were being sold onthe streets for a few centimes each. I have often seen an illiteratemilitiaman buy one of these ballads, laboriously spell out the words, andthen, when he had got the hang of it, begin singing it to an appropriatetune."



Barcelona, 1936

from Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell.

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