Welcome to Journey Through Time and the fourth in our six-part series on the Spanish Civil War.

Now last time we followed the American Lincoln Brigade into their first battle, the Battle of Harama, in February 1937, a catastrophe in which they lost half of their

battalion in a single day. That catastrophe was almost immediately refrained and reimagined by the

propaganda, not as a disaster, but as a heroic sacrifice. And meanwhile, as we said,

George Orwell is also in Spain, but he's in a different part.

He is on the Aragon Front outside Barcelona, and he has joined up to fight for a revolution.

But the Republican coalition is fracturing.

Orwell is on his way back to Barcelona, but in May 1937, Barcelona is about to explode.

Now Orwell had arrived in Barcelona in the early months of the revolution,

and he had been enthralled by this anarchist revolution that's part of the Republic fighting against Franco and fascism.

He'd arrived as a journalist, but he'd been so

impressed and so moved by what he'd seen in Barcelona that he'd decided to join the PUM militia,

and he'd been off to the front a journalist who'd become a volunteer or soldier. He's seen how the war is being mismanaged,

and he's also understanding the divisions within the republics that are

undermining the war effort. It's May 1937 and he is back in Barcelona.

And as he arrives, the Republican coalition in Barcelona is about to tear itself apart.

So the communists and anarchists who are supposed to be joining forces in order to fight

fascism decide to fight each other instead. And Barcelona really shows Orwell the beginnings

of totalitarianism in action. Not only within the fascist forces that he's decided to fight, but within the

anti-fascist coalition that he has joined.

What happens in Barcelona really then becomes a foundation for Orwell's greatest writing

for Animal Farm for 1984 and for the critique that he's going to mount for the

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