Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell - Read this if you are traveling to Barcelona

I wonder what is the appropriate first action when you come from a country at war and set foot on peaceful soil. Mine was to rush to the tobacco-kiosk and buy as many cigars and cigarettes as I could stuff into my pockets. Most war correspondents observe wars and then tell stories about the battles, the soldiers and the civilians. George Orwell--novelist, journalist, sometime socialist--actually traded his press pass for a uniform and fought against Francos Fascists in the Spanish Civil War during 1936 and 1937. He put his politics and his formidable conscience to the toughest tests during those days in the trenches in the Catalan section of Spain. Then, after nearly getting killed, he went back to England and wrote a gripping account of his experiences, as well as a complex analysis of the political machinations that led to the defeat of the socialist Republicans and the victory of the Fascists.

Read this if you are traveling to Barcelona
I read Orwell's memoir in preparation for (and during) my second visit to Barcelona. Orwell is so English in his outlook, and clearly loves the people of Catalonia. The book is an excellent review of many of the issues involved in the Spanish Civil war, and how people's fates were decided so clearly by expediency and political whim. Having read _Animal Farm_ and _1984_ as required reading in some prehistoric educational experience, it was refreshing to be inside the head of a much more personal Orwell than I remembered. It was also particularly meaningful to read about places with which I was becoming increasingly familiar. The book was written before the end of the Civil War, and published around the time of Orwell's death in 1950, but it feels so very much in the present. I would place this little book and Zafon's _Shadow of the Wind_ on the "must read" list for anyone either planning to visit or recently returned from Barcelona.

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