Spanish Civil War labourers, and parts of the middle class. The conservative, strongly Catholic Basque country, along with Catholic Galicia and the more left-leaning Catalonia, sought autonomy or independence from the central government of Madrid. The Republican government allowed for the possibility of self-government for the two regions, whose forces were gathered under the People's Republican Army ("Ejército Popular Republicano", or EPR), which was reorganized into mixed brigades after October 1936. A few well-known people fought on the Republican side, such as English novelist George Orwell (who wrote "Homage to Catalonia" (1938), an account of his experiences in the war) and Canadian thoracic
George Orwell Germany (during the war) did not really make him a traitor. He accused The Ministry of Information of exaggerating Wodehouse's actions for propaganda purposes. Arthur Koestler said that Orwell's "uncompromising intellectual honesty made him appear almost inhuman at times." Ben Wattenberg stated: "Orwell's writing pierced intellectual hypocrisy wherever he found it." According to historian Piers Brendon, "Orwell was the saint of common decency who would in earlier days, said his BBC boss Rushbrook Williams, 'have been either canonised – or burnt at the stake'". Raymond Williams in describes Orwell as a "successful impersonation of a plain man who bumps into