Confederación Nacional del Trabajo the Spanish Revolution of 1936. George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War in the militia of Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), a revolutionary Trotskyst party (and therefore opposed to the Soviet Union line) whose militants were allied with the CNT during the revolution and to which Andrés Nin belonged. Orwell described in his book "Homage to Catalonia" the time during which Barcelona rose up with the CNT and anarchism. In the ninth chapter of his book, Orwell commented that "As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists." In Ernest Hemingway's
George Orwell until he had seen the situation "in situ", Orwell instead used his Independent Labour Party contacts to get a letter of introduction to John McNair in Barcelona. Orwell set out for Spain on about 23 December 1936, dining with Henry Miller in Paris on the way. The American writer told Orwell that going to fight in the Civil War out of some sense of obligation or guilt was "sheer stupidity" and that the Englishman's ideas "about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., were all baloney." A few days later in Barcelona, Orwell met John McNair of the Independent Labour Party