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Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Brand Page
  3. Orwell in Spain
  4. Orwell in Spain
  5. Introduction
  6. Editorial Note
  7. Acknowledgements
  8. Orwell’s Journey to Spain, December 1936
  9. Extract from ‘As I Please’, 42 [The Journey to Spain]
  10. Jennie Lee to Margaret M. Goalby, 23 June 1950: Orwell’s Arrival in Barcelona
  11. Orwell in Spain, December 1936
  12. Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore
  13. ‘British Author with the Militia’
  14. Eileen Blair to her mother
  15. To Eileen Blair
  16. Extract from letter from Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore
  17. Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy
  18. Extract from letter to Victor Gollancz
  19. Orwell’s Wound
  20. To Cyril Connolly
  21. Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy
  22. Escape from Spain
  23. BARCELONA 13TH JULY, 1937
  24. Charles Doran
  25. Homage to Catalonia
  26. X
  27. ‘Spilling the Spanish Beans’
  28. Eileen Blair to John McNair
  29. George Kopp to Dr Laurence O’Shaughnessy
  30. Translation of letter written in Spanish by George Kopp to Lieutenant-Colonel Burillo,7 Chief of Police, Barcelona
  31. George Kopp to Eileen Blair
  32. Review of The Spanish Cockpit by Franz Borkenau; Volunteer in Spain by John Sommerfield
  33. To Rayner Heppenstall
  34. ‘Eye-Witness in Barcelona’
  35. Abstracts of Reports on the Spanish Civil War in the Daily Worker and News Chronicle, 1936–7
  36. To Amy Charlesworth
  37. To Charles Doran
  38. Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War
  39. To Geoffrey Gorer
  40. Review of Red Spanish Notebook by Mary Low and Juan Brea; Heroes of the Alcazar by R. Timmermans; Spanish Circus by Martin Armstrong
  41. To H. N. Brailsford
  42. Review of Storm Over Spain by Mairin Mitchell; Spanish Rehearsal by Arnold Lunn; Catalonia Infelix by E. Allison Peers; Wars of Ideas in Spain by Josée Castillejo; Invertebrate Spain by Josée Ortega y Gasset
  43. H. N. Brailsford to Orwell
  44. To H. N. Brailsford
  45. Review of The Tree of Gernika by G. L. Steer; Spanish Testament by Arthur Koestler
  46. To the Editor, Time and Tide
  47. To Raymond Mortimer
  48. To Stephen Spender
  49. To Geoffrey Gorer
  50. ‘Notes* on the Spanish Militias
  51. To the Editor, The Times Literary Supplement
  52. Sir Richard Rees to Orwell
  53. To the Editor, The Listener
  54. Review of Spain’s Ordeal1 by Robert Sencourt; Franco’s Rule [anonymous]
  55. Review of The Civil War in Spain by Frank Jellinek1
  56. Review of Searchlight on Spain by the Duchess of Atholl1
  57. To the Editor, Manchester Guardian
  58. To Yvonne Davet
  59. To Raymond Postgate
  60. Orwell made two copies of this summary of the article in La Flèche of 14 October 1938, by L.-P. Foucaud.
  61. Review of The Church in Spain, 1737-1937 by E. Allison Peers; Crusade in Spain by Eoin O’Dujfy1
  62. To Frank Jellinek
  63. ‘Release of George Kopp’
  64. ‘Caesarean Section in Spain
  65. To Yvonne Davet
  66. Review of Hotel in Flight by Nancy Johnstone
  67. Review of The Last Days of Madrid by S. Casado, translated by Rupert Croft-Cooke; Behind the Battle by T. C. Worsley
  68. Review of The Spanish Dilemma by E. Allison Peers; A Key to Victory: Spain by Charles Duff
  69. Extract from War-time Diary
  70. Review of The Forge by Arturo Barea,1 translated and with an introduction by Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell2
  71. Extract from letter to Partisan Review
  72. Extract from BBC Weekly News Review for India, 22 [Comparison with the Spanish Civil War]
  73. ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’ [1942?]
  74. Proposed BBC Broadcast on the Spanish Civil War
  75. Review of Spain in Eclipse, 1937–1943 by E. Allison Peers; Behind the Spanish Mask by Lawrence Dundas
  76. Extract from ‘As I Please’, 10 [How the lie becomes truth]
  77. ‘The Eight Years of War: Spanish Memories’
  78. Review of An Interlude in Spain by Charles d’Ydewalle, translated by Eric Sutton
  79. Review of The Clash by Arturo Barea1
  80. Orwell’s Pamphlet Collection
  81. A summary of letters from and to David Astor, 4 and 5
  82. Further Reading

There has been a strong tendency to push these facts out of sight and even to claim Franco’s hostile ‘non-belligerency’ as a triumph for British diplomacy. Rather should the true history of the Spanish war be kept always in mind as an object-lesson in the folly and meanness of Power Politics. Nothing, indeed, redeems its story except the courage of the fighting-men on both sides, and the toughness of the civilian population of Loyalist Spain, who for years endured hunger and hardship unknown to us at the worst moments of war.

[2593]

Review of An Interlude in Spain by Charles d’Ydewalle, translated by Eric Sutton

Observer, 24 December 1944

Unwilling witnesses are generally accounted the most reliable, and Mr. Charles d’Ydewalle is at least partly an unwilling witness against Franco’s Spain. He is a Belgian journalist (evidently a devout Catholic), and during the Spanish Civil War he was a warm partisan of General Franco, in whose territory he appears to have spent some months. When his own country was subjugated by the Germans and he set out on the roundabout journey to England, he was quite confident that Nationalist Spain, whose ‘crusade’ he had supported as best he could, would offer no obstacle. It was therefore with some surprise that he found himself arrested and flung into jail almost as soon as he had set foot on Spanish soil.

This was towards the end of 1941. He was not released until eight months later, and at no time did he discover what offence, if any, he was charged with. Presumably he had been arrested because his flight to England indicated Allied sympathies. He was incarcerated first of all in the Model Prison in Barcelona, which had been built to hold 700 prisoners and at this time was holding 8,000. Later he was placed in a concentration camp among refugees of many different nationalities. Here the conditions were comparatively sympathetic; it was possible to buy small luxuries; one could choose one’s hut mates, and there was international rivalry in the matter of digging tunnels under the barbed wire. It was the Model Prison that opened or partially opened Mr. d’Ydewalle’s eyes to the nature of the régime.

At the end of 1941, nearly three years after the ending of the civil war, people were still being shot, in this prison alone, at the rate of five or six a week. In addition there was torture, presumably for the purpose of extracting confessions, and on occasion the torturer ‘went too far’. Political prisoners and ordinary criminals were more or less mixed up together, but the majority of the prisoners were left-overs from the civil war, usually serving sentences of thirty years. In many cases, Mr. d’Ydewalle noted, this would take them to the ripe age of ninety-five or so. The shootings were carried out with the maximum of cruelty. No one knew, until the actual morning of execution, whether he was to be shot or not.