Homage to Catalonia: Appendix II Summary & Analysis

Orwell warns the reader that no objective account of the war exists, as the only records available are those of party propaganda. After this warning, Orwell uses his authority as an eyewitness to analyze in detail the Barcelona street fighting of May 1937.

Orwell examines the events leading up to the street fighting. As political tension between Anarchists and Communists had been growing throughout Catalonia, a violent outcome was deemed inevitable. Workers began to feel that the Government was trying to impede the revolution. The Government’s decision to build a non-political police force and to order citizens to surrender all private weapons were the immediate causes of the conflict.

On May 3rd, 1937, the Government took over the Telephone Exchange, which was controlled by the Anarchists. Believing that they were under direct attack, the Anarchists took to the streets and began fighting. The city was divided geographically into political sections separated by barricades, with the working-class neighborhoods under Anarchist and POUM control pitted against the city center, which was under police and Communist control. However, the fighting was mostly defensive on both sides. On May 7, people began to leave the barricades, primarily because of the food shortage. That same day, Government-sent forces (the Valencian Assault Guards) took control of the city and the Government seized all private arms.

While the fighting had no direct effect on the war, it allowed the Valencian Government to assert its dominance in Catalonia, to further break up the militias, and to suppress the POUM. These things probably would have come to pass eventually, Orwell suggests, even if the fighting had never taken place.

As to the nature of the outbreak, Orwell judges that it was entirely spontaneous. The Anarchist leaders disowned the affair from the start, while the POUM leaders, more hesitant, stood by the workers in the street, while at the same time urging the workers to only act defensively. In sum, neither the POUM nor the Anarchists were moved by revolutionary intentions or by rebellion against the Government. They were merely reacting to what they considered an unjust attack by the police. It was unlikely, too, that the Communists had planned or expected such a violent outbreak. If either side had contemplated large-scale violence, Orwell argues, there is no doubt that they would have brought troops to the city beforehand and made plans for food distribution, which was not the case.

The spontaneous nature of the conflict was not represented in the press, which placed all the blame on the Anarchists and the POUM. The English press denounced the Anarchists for refusing to obey the Government’s order to surrender their arms when such weapons were desperately needed at the front. This perspective, Orwell explains, disregards the complexity of the conflict between Communists and Anarchists. Both sides understood that political tension was likely to evolve into violence and that, as a result, it was important to keep arms for defensive purposes. To Anarchists, surrendering their arms meant capitulating to Communist dominance.

The Government’s assault on the Telephone Exchange, Orwell argues, was bound to lead to violence. While the foreign press argues that the Anarchists should have surrendered the building without resisting (as any fight within the Republican coalition was harmful to the war effort), Orwell explains that this argument is beside the point. In the tense situation that Spain was in, the Government was bound to know that it would be met with resistance. It follows that both the Government and the Anarchists are at fault. The press, however, refused to produce a two-sided version of the events. This can be explained by the fact that Anarchists have virtually no influence in international press.

Orwell proceeds to examine the Communist and pro-Communist accounts of the conflict, which placed all blame for the violence on the POUM. The violence was described as a premeditated rebellion by the POUM, a Fascist conspiracy aimed at halting the Government’s war efforts. Orwell offers three reasons for which it is impossible for the POUM to be part of a Fascist conspiracy against the Government. First, the POUM was too small a group to provoke such large-scale violence. Second, the accusation of Fascist collaboration with Italy and Germany is ridiculous considering that it relies on absolutely no evidence. Finally, trouble only arose in Barcelona and nowhere else. At the front and in the POUM stronghold of Lérida, life and the struggle against Fascists went on as usual. Had the POUM meant to orchestrate a Fascist uprising, it would undoubtedly have had consequences in other places besides Barcelona.

After examining articles from the Communist press, Orwell concludes that it is full of contradictions. In one article, the Anarchists are presented as the ones who attacked the Telephone Exchange—which is, in fact, their very own building. In another, the police attacked the Telephone Exchange in order to remove fifty POUM militiamen who had occupied the building the night before. These and other instances convince Orwell that the Communist press is full of untruths, providing a confused and contradictory account of the event.

The articles also engage in pure fabrication that demonstrates a complete ignorance of local dynamics. Some speak of machine-guns, tanks, and artillery fire, for which, Orwell notes, there is absolutely no evidence. Orwell describes these exaggerations as political necessity. In order to formulate a credible accusation against the POUM, newspapers needed to overemphasize the POUM’s strength, which would allow them to convincingly portray the POUM as being fully responsible for the outbreak of violence.

In sum, Orwell concludes, the Communist press was aimed at a public entirely ignorant of local circumstances in Spain. They were meant to instill hatred against the POUM and, in the case of some foreign capitalist newspapers, against the Anarchists, laying all blame for the fighting on one side. Orwell emphasizes that most foreign journalists in Spain depended on the biased Ministry of Propaganda for information.

Accusations that the POUM was a fascist organization lacked credibility, as all POUM leaders had serious histories of revolutionary involvement, and had played an important part in resisting Fascist forces. While the POUM’s insistence on revolution could arguably be considered counter-productive to the war effort, it could not, in any circumstance, be understood as treachery. In fact, after the events, the falseness of such accusations came to light when most members of the Spanish Government rejected all charges against the POUM. While Fascist spies were always shot immediately, the POUM leaders have been kept in prison and official charges never formulated. These facts suffice to conclude that all charges against the POUM were direct inventions of the Communist press.

Finally, Orwell addresses the accusations that the POUM are a Trotskyist organization. By examining three different possible definitions of the word “Trotskyist,” he argues that this charge revealed nothing about the POUM’s actual ideology, but that it was merely used as an insult, equivalent to calling someone a traitor and a criminal.

Orwell explains that he has discussed the accusations against the POUM in such detail because he believes that this fighting within the leftwing coalition was not trivial but, rather, was the most dangerous force undermining the anti-Fascist coalition. Eliminating political rivals through false accusations, Orwell argues, is a typical Communist technique. Its only effect is to breed political intolerance, divide the political left, and impede serious discussion of complicated events.