Homage to Catalonia 1943. The closing phrase of the poem, "No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit", was later taken by George Woodcock for the title of his Governor General's Award-winning critical study of Orwell and his work, "The Crystal Spirit" (1966). Homage to Catalonia Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting for the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. The war was one of the shaping events on his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write, in 1946, "Every line of serious work that I have written
1936 in the Spanish Civil War 1936 in the Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) broke out with a military uprising in Morocco on July 17, triggered by events in Madrid. Within days, Spain was divided in two: a "Republican" or "Loyalist" Spain consisting of the Second Spanish Republic (within which were pockets of revolutionary anarchism and Trotskyism), and a "Nationalist" Spain under the insurgent generals, and, eventually, under the leadership of General Francisco Franco. By the summer, important tendencies of the war become clear, both in terms of atrocities on both sides and in the contrast between the Soviet Union's intermittent help to