Homage to Truth

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's account of his experiences as a volunteer on the republican side during the Spanish Civil War. But it's not just another memoir. No, it's far more. For it marks a decisive stage in his progress as a writer and a thinker. Indeed, if one wanted to understand the roots behind the major themes in both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four this book is essential reading.

Orwell, who had developed a general but rather unfocused sympathy for socialism, came to Spain to fight against 'fascism' without any particular idea of what he was fighting for. Like the majority of the foreign volunteers he was likely to have ended up serving with the International Brigades, controlled by the communists and ultimately directed by the Comintern in Moscow. But he did not. Quite by chance he enrolled in the militia of the Partido Obrero Unificación Marxista or POUM, a local Marxist and anti-Stalinist movement set up by one Andrés Nin, a former associate of Leon Trotsky. Yes, it was by chance, but politically and intellectually it was a decisive step in turning Eric Blair, the author's real name, into the mature George Orwell.

The Spanish Civil War was a struggle between the left and the right, between progress and reaction, between enlightenment and oppression. Well, no, it was far more complex than that. In 1937 on the republican side the struggle had become a war within a war, as Stalin decided to suppress all of the non-communist factions on the side of the government. This was the time of the Great Purge, of the Moscow Show Trails and the general attack on all 'Trotsky Fascists'. This was a time when every weapon was used in a campaign of disinformation, one based on the grossest abuse of language by the communist and socialist left, one based on the systematic rewriting of history. After all, he who controls the past controls the future.

Orwell, who had been serving on the Catalan front, returned to Barcelona in May of 1937. There he discovered that the free and comradely atmosphere that he had encountered when he first came to Spain had changed utterly. He was to be caught up in some extraordinary events now known as the Barcelona May Days, in which one left-wing faction fought against another left-wing faction. In the communist controlled press the POUM was denounced as 'fascist plotters'. With agents of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police at work, Nin was arrested along with many others, and subsequently murdered in custody. Orwell himself had to leave Spain in fear of his life.

Homage to Catalonia is a straightforward account of his experiences at the front and in Barcelona, packaged in some general political musings. The language, as one would expect from one of the great modern masters of English prose, is limpid. It's an honest book, too honest for some; Victor Gollancz, the left-wing publishing house for whom he had previously written, refused to accept his account of his Spanish experience even before a single word had been written. Why? Because he had served with the POUM, that's why. It should be remembered that Gollancz was not even controlled by the Communist Party. This attitude, this unwillingness to say anything critical of the official Soviet line, not stopping short of the Moscow Trials, was to be found right across much of the left-leaning and liberal opinion of the day. Of the British press Orwell was to write:

In Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship that is implied by an ordinary lie...I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various "party lines."

Orwell, as I have said, went to Spain with his politics largely unfocused. He came back a committed anti-Stalinist. He came back believing that there was a standard of objective truth that had to be defended, a standard of truth that should corrupted by the demands of propaganda or the exigencies of dictatorship. He came back believing that two plus two equals four; and if that is granted all else follows.

Remembering the Spanish Civil War

It’s seventy years now since the great tragedy that engulfed Spain between 1936 and 1939 ended. I do not believe that there has been any conflict in history more misred that the Spanish Civil War, one that continues to be misread, if we take Ken Loach's Land and Freedom as an example.

The fact is there was not one civil war but several, some with deep roots in Spanish history, most often concerned with the friction between central power and local autonomy. For the government in Madrid the Anarchists, their allies, were as big a threat as the Fascists, their enemies. It's likely, then, that the victorious Spain, though dominated by bourgeoise democrats, would have continued to rely on the military and political support of Stalin and the Communists. For such support the Communists would clearly demand some kind of return, and in stages are likely to have acquired a dominant position in government, perhaps even fulfilling the prediction of Julian Besterio, the moderate socialist politician, that "if the war is won, Spain will be Communist. For every other element of our democracy this would be calamitous."

Consider what was to happen a few years hence in Poland, for example, another Catholic and agrarian nation. The same pattern of alliance, co-option and control is likely to have emerged in Spain in 1939-40.

The Franco dictatorship was centralist in nature; there is no reason to suppose that the victorious republic would have been any different. The Communist controlled Popular Army would thus have suppressed any attempts at Anarchist resistance, just as it would have moved against the seperatist movements in Catalonia and the Basque country. Would there have been another Civil War? This is possible. There would certainly have been a lengthy period of political instability and counter-insurgency operations. This leads on to the next stage of my analysis: Spain's position in the coming international crisis.

Republican Spain, dominated by the Communists, would, of course, have followed the Russian lead after the Nazi-Soviet Pact was concluded in August 1939, which meant rejecting the coming Second World War as an 'imperialist conflict'. A Soviet satellite standing astride the western gate to the Meditteranean may very well have provoked a response by Britain and France, if not outright intervention then perhaps some military assistance to the remnants of the Nationalist army, which had taken refuge in Portugal in 1939, a situation that would have destabilised the country even further.

Hitler, after his victory over France in 1940, would therefore have a weak and divided Spain, controlled by the Communists, on his southern flank. The outbreak of war with the Soviet Union in 1941 is quite likely to have been followed at one and the same time by an invasion of Spain, or at least a dash for the vital base of Gibraltar; this was certainly within the capability of the German army left in France. We know that Hitler had such a plan even with Franco in control. With Spain governed by Dolores Ibárruri there is no reason to suppose that he would not have put these plans into effect. In the end Franco, if he serves no other historical purpose, may very well have saved Spain from Hitler.

The Basque Witch Trials

The trials of the Basque witches at Longrono, near Navarre, in northern Spain, which began in January 1609, was almost certainly the biggest single event of its kind in history. By the end some 7,000 cases had been examined by the Inquisition. The first phase ended in 1610, with a declaration of auto da fe against thirty-one of the accused, eleven of whom were burned to death. Thereafter proceedings were suspended until the inquisitors had a chance to gather further evidence, on what they believed to be a widespread witch cult in the Basque region. Alonso de Salazar Frias, the junior inquisitor and a lawyer by training, was delegated to examine the matter at length. Armed with an Edict of Grace, promising pardon to all those who voluntarily reported themselves and denounced their accomplices, he travelled across the countryside. As was usual in cases of this kind, denunciations flowed in. Frias finally returned to Longrono with 'confessions' from close on 2000 people, 1,384 of whom were children between the ages of seven and fourteen, implicating a further 5000named individuals. The evidence gathered covered 11,000 pages in all.

Contrary to the usual picture of the Inquisition, ready to believe all and every confession of wrong doing, Frias, the youngest judge in a panel of three, was highly sceptical about the whole thing, saying that he had found no substantive proof of witchcraft on his travels, in spite of the manifold confessions. More than that, he questioned the whole basis of the trials. Because of this disagreement on how to proceed, the matter had to be referred to the Inquisitor-General in Madrid. The senior judges, Alonso Becerra y Holquin and Juan de Valle Alvadro, even went so far as to accuse their colleague of being 'in league with the Devil.' Some of Frias' objections are truly remarkable, considering the atmosphere of the times, and are therefore worth quoting at length;

The real question is: are we to believe that witchcraft occured in a given situation simply because of what the witches claim? No: it is clear that the witches are not to be believed, and the judges should not pass sentence on anyone, unless the case can be proven with external and objective evidence sufficient to convince everyone who hears it. And who can accept the following: that a person can frequently fly through the air and travel a hundred leagues in an hour; that a woman can get through a space not big enough for a fly; that a person can make himself invisible; that he can be in a river or the open sea and not get wet; or that he can be in bed at the sabbath at the same time...and that a witch can turn herself into any shape she fancies, be it housefly or raven? Indeed, these claims go beyond all human reason and may even pass the limits permitted by the Devil.

Confession and acccusation on their own, Frias maintained, were not enough. It is a great pity that this simple guiding principle was not held in mind, all the way from Salem to Moscow.

The Inquisitor-General shared this view. For some time the central office of the Inquisition had been sceptical about claims of magic and witchcraft, and had only sanctioned the earlier burnings with considerably reluctance, and only because of the reported mood of panic from Longrono. As far back as 1538 the Council had warned judges not to believe all that the read in Malleus Maleficarum, the infamous witch-finding text. In August 1614 it ruled that all of the trials pending at Longrono should be dismissed. At the same time it issued new and more rigorous rules of evidence that brought witch-burning in Spain to an end, long before the Protestant north.

Ethnic Cleansing-the End of Moorish Spain

The fate of the Spanish Muslims in the late Medieval and early modern period uncovers what might be considered as the first serious act of 'ethnic cleansing' in all of European history. They were to be the victims of a state policy that had as many racist as religious overtones.

The surrender of Granada in 1492 was accompanied by a treaty, allowing the Spanish crown's new Muslim subjects a large measure of religious toleration. They were also allowed the continuing use of their own language, schools, laws and customs. But the interpretation of the royal edict was largely left to the local Christian authorities. Hernando de Talavera, the first archbishop of Granada after its fall, took a fairly tolerant view.

This changed when he was replaced by Cardinal Cisneros, who immediately organised a drive for mass conversions and burned all texts in Arabic. Outraged by this breach of faith, in 1499 the Mudejar rose in the First Rebellion of Alpujarras, which only had the effect of giving Ferdinand and Isabella the excuse to revoke the promise of toleration. That same year the Muslim leaders of Granada were ordered to hand over almost all of the remaining books in Arabic, most of which were burned. Beginning in Valencia in 1502 Muslims were offered the choice of baptism or exile. The majority decided to accept this, becoming 'New Christians', of very great interest to the newly-established Spanish Inquisition, authorised by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478.

It is important to understand that the Converts, though outwardly Christian, continued to adhere to their old beliefs in private, a conduct allowed for by some Islamic authorities when the faithful are under duress or threat of life, a practice known as taqiyyah or precaution. Responding to a plea from his co-religionists in Spain, in 1504 the Grand Mufti of Oran issued a decree saying that Muslims may drink wine, eat pork and other forbidden things, if they were under compulsion. There were good reasons for this; for abstinence from wine or pork could, and did, cause people to be denounced to the Inquisition. But no matter how closely they observed all of the correct forms, the 'Morisco' or Little Moors, a term of disparagement, were little better than second-class citizens, tainted, it might be said, by blood rather than by actions.

Despite all of these pressures some people continued to observe Moorish forms, and practice as Muslims, well into the sixteenth century. In 1567 Philip II finally made the use of Arabic illegal, forbidding the Islamic religion, dress and customs, a step which led to the Second Rebellion of Alpujarras. This was suppressed with considerable brutality. In one incident troops commanded by Don John of Austria destroyed the town of Galera east of Granada, after slaughtering the entire population. The Moriscos of Granada were rounded up and dispersed across Spain. Edicts of expulsion were finally issued by Philip III in 1609, against people who were now perceived to be a threat to the 'purity' of the Spanish race.

Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera

For me it’s an oversimplification to call Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera a Fascist; but there again it is probably an oversimplification to call anyone a Fascist who was not a member of the Italian National Fascist Party or the British Union of Fascists. The Nazis, for example, almost never referred to themselves as such, and Jose Antonio specifically rejected the label in 1934 as an appropriate descriptive term for his Falange.

The problem is, you see, that the very term Fascism has really no intrinsic meaning, and the various radical and right-wing parties to whom it has been applied have differed from one another in almost every fundamental. There was certainly the common emphasis on the nation; but this kind of ideology was not restricted to parties of the radical right. One might conceivably detect some overlap between the early Fasci italiani di combattimento and the Falange, with the stress on direct action and on forms of National syndicalism; but early Fascism was anti-clerical, whereas the Falange took a stand on Catholicism and other traditional Spanish values.

Mussolini's movement developed in a more reactionary direction by allying itself with the big landlords in northern Italy, whereas Jose Antonio's Falange was just as critical of landlordism as it was of Communism. His political programme, moreover, looked in essence to the recreation of the state headed by Miguel Primo de Rivera, his father, which could not be described in any meaningful sense as Fascist. Jose Antonio was radical; he was conservative; he was Catholic; he was nationalist. Above all, he was Spanish