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
Yugoslav volunteers in the Spanish Civil War Yugoslav volunteers in the Spanish Civil War The Yugoslav volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, known as Spanish fighters (, , / "Španski borci") and Yugoslav brigadistas (), was a contingent of volunteers from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that fought beside the Republican side (in support of the Second Spanish Republic) in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). An estimated 1,664 "Yugoslav brigadistas" fought in the war, out of whom c. 800 were killed in action. According to the Spanish statistics, 148 Yugoslav volunteers received the officer rank during the conflict. Most of them fought in the battalions "Dimitrov" and "Đuro