The Spanish Civil War began on July 17th, 1936 when a number of military generals staged an armed coup d’état against the government of the Second Spanish Republic (Graham 1-20). Initially the political situation seemed like an easy one, as sides quickly became polarized by political ideology between conservative Nationalist and liberal Republican camps. Soon, however, the Republican was splintered by a wide spectrum of internal political divisions. Media of the period would help define the complicated character of such camps, while colouring the reader’s understanding of the Civil War both in Spain and abroad, as the liberal crusade presented in writing glossed over its very real political complexities (Buchanan 146). More than 40,000 men and women from 50 nations took up the cause in an ideological fight for democracy, intellectualism and freedom, against the haunting cloud of fascism (Agathocleous 40).
With the exception of the Soviet Union and Mexico, the official government stance of other nations toward the Spanish Civil War was one of non-intervention. This did not deter press or writers on the subject of the Civil War in Spain and the ways in which print altered political dispositions and its reader’s understanding of the conflict. Republican support in journalism’s role in the Spanish civil conflict from abroad has been debatably seen as an error of interpretation, while in contrast is often argued as conscious deception of fantasists (Deacon 5-6). With firsthand reports scant, and the inability to verify the reliability of sources, “…the need to maintain a certain image of Spain guided the writing that emerged from the Civil War rather than the reverse” (Wilkinson 6).
British literary figure, George Orwell stands out as a foreigner who enlisted first as a journalist, and soon became a combatant in the Spanish Civil War. As a reader, he came to know quite well that text could be used as an effective tool of political propaganda, reflective not of truth, but of politicized implications of what was meant to be (Deacon 6). He would use his agency as a writer to proliferate his ideas as a reader on the civil war in a series of essays, reviews, letters to editors, and his seminal novel, Homage to Catalonia.
The real character of political ideologies was an important aspect of the Spanish Civil War upon which Orwell had hoped to shed light. Orwell’s story offers a specific look into readership and the censorship that occurs in the press as he sought to expose totalitarian abuses against the Popular Front alongside the Republicans. His actions followed the idea that “…the truth can only be kept alive when an honest observer communicates it to others who share his capacity for critical consciousness and independence of judgment” (Bjornson 6). Orwell’s writing promulgated the author’s commitment to communicate his opinions as a reader to the public, who had been deprived of an honest view of the conflict itself, and of the actual meaning of fascism (Orwell, Spilling 222).
As a reader, Orwell felt distaste for the simple black and white media representation of the conflict (Orwell, Spilling 215-216), which, contrary to media and early literary exposés, had actually become a revolution within a civil war (Orwell, Charlesworth 61). Orwell’s involvement with the Marxist anarchist (anti-Stalinist, and thus demonized as Trotskyist) brigade, POUM, in contrast to written propaganda, gave him a clear sense of how the Popular Front, in particular, its Stalinist Communists, came to practice totalitarianism themselves against their former allies, the POUM. Exposing the Republican camp’s dirty secrets became quite a contentious issue as it carried the potential to split the political ideologies of readers, as well as the Popular Front against fascism internationally (Hoskins 101-102). Spurred by his knowledge as an active participant and active reader on the conflict, Orwell stood as a role model of and for perceptive thinkers (Marks 89). For him, as well as any other writer on the topic, there had been a fundamental political commitment, but, for many other writers, such a commitment had often sacrificed honesty for the justification of political falsehood (Thomas 27). From the 1930’s on Orwell would dedicate his literary career to combating fascist totalitarianism, whatever its political incarnation.
Work Cited:
Agathocleous, Tanya. George Orwell: Battling Big Brother. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.
Bjornson, Richard. “Betrayed Revolution and the Persistent Ideal: Regler, Orwell, and the Spanish Civil Wars.” John Beals Romeiser. Red Flags, Black Flags: Critical Essay on the Literature of the Spanish Civil War. Potomac: Studia Humanitatis, 1982. 157-198. Print.
Buchanan, Tom. Britain and the Spanish Civil War. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Print.
Deacon, David. British News Media and the Spanish Civil War: Tomorrow May Be Too Late. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Print.
Graham, Helen. The Spanish Civil War: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.
Hoskins, Katharine B. Today the Struggle: Literature and Politics in England During the Spanish Civil War. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969. Print.
Marks, Peter. “Where he Wrote: Periodicals and the essays of George Orwell.” Twentieth Century Literature 41.4 (Winter, 1995). 266-283. Print.
Orwell, George. “Spilling the Spanish Beans.” New English Weekly, 29 July, and 2 September 1937. Peter H. Davison (editor). Orwell in Spain: The Full Text of Homage to Catalonia, with Associated Articles, Reviews and Letters from the Complete Works of George Orwell. London: Penguin, 2001. Print.
Orwell, George. “To Amy Charlesworth.” 1 August 1937. Peter H. Davison, Ian Angus, and Sheila Davison (editors). The Complete Works of George Orwell. Volume 11. London: Secker & Warburg, 1997. Print.
Thomas, Gareth. The Novel of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1975). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Print.
Wilkinson, James D. “Truth and Delusion: European Intellectuals in Search of the Spanish Civil War.” Salmagundi 76.77 (Fall 1987 – Winter 1998). 3-25. Print.