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
Foreign involvement in the Spanish Civil War loosely inspired by his experiences and those of other members of POUM at the hands of Stalinists when the Popular Front began to fight within itself, as were the torture scenes in "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Ernest Hemingway's novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was inspired by his experiences in Spain. George Seldes reported on the war for the "New York Post". The third part of Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy, "A Moment of War", is also based on his Civil War experiences. Norman Bethune used the opportunity to develop the special skills of battlefield medicine. As a casual visitor, Errol Flynn used