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
Why Orwell Matters induced to return to the source." George Packer of "The Independent" gave the book a mixed review, however, remarking, ""Why Orwell Matters" is presented by its publisher as a case of posthumous affinity between writers across generations, but critic and subject turn out to be mismatched, and it's the critic who suffers as a result." Despite praising many of Hitchens's analyses of Orwell, Packer added, "For a slender book, "Why Orwell Matters" is oddly unfocused and hard to get through. What Hitchens has to say is what a sympathetic reader of Orwell would want said. But he never sustains a