79 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
79 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
Barcelona, 1936
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from Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell.
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This was in late December 1936, less than seven months ago as I write, and yet
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it is a period that has already receded into enormous distance. Later events
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have obliterated it much more completely than they have obliterated 1935, or
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1905, for that matter. I had come to Spain with some notion of writing
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newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at
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that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do.
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The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution
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was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it
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probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was
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ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was
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something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever
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been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every
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building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red
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flags ow with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled
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with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties;
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almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and
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there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workman. Every shop and
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cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised; even the
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bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black.
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Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal.
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Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody
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said 'Sen~or' or 'Don' ort even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else
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'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tipping
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had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first
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experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a
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lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered,
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and the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and
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black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in
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clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like
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daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where
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crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loud-speakers were
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bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was
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the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward
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appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased
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to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were
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no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class
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clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. All this was
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queer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in some
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ways I did not not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of
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affairs worth fighting for. Also, I believed that things were as they appeared,
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that this was really a workers' State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either
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fled, been killed or voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not
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realise that great numbers of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and
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disguising themselves as proletarians for the time being.
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Together with all this there was something of the evil atmosphere of war. The
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town had a gaunt untidy look, roads and buildings were in poor repair, the
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streets at night were dimly lit for fear of air-raids, the shops were mostly
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shabby and half-empty. Meat was scarce and milk practically unobtainable,
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there was a shortage of coal, sugar and petrol, and a really serious shortage
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of bread. Even at this period the bread-queues were often hundreds of yards
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long. Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful.
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There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low;
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you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the
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gypsies. #Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future,
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a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom.
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Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the
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capitalist machine. In the barbers' shops were Anarchist notices (the barbers
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were mostly Anarchists) solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves.
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In the streets were coloured posters appealing to prostitutes to stop being
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prostitutes. To anyone from the hard-boiled, sneering civilization of the
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English-speaking races there was something rather pathetic in the literalness
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with which these idealistic Spaniards took the hackneyed phrase of revolution.
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At that time revolutionary ballads of the naivest kind, all about the
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proletarian brotherhood and the wickedness of Mussolini, were being sold on
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the streets for a few centimes each. I have often seen an illiterate
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militiaman buy one of these ballads, laboriously spell out the words, and
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then, when he had got the hang of it, begin singing it to an appropriate
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tune.
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