George Orwell came to Spain at the end of 1936, in order to write about the Spanish Civil War. Soon thereafter, he enlisted in the fight to defend the Republic by joining the militia of a particular communist party, the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista).

[Centelles picture here]

Lleida was, in Orwell’s words “The chief stronghold of the POUM”. The party’s headquarters was located a quarter of a mile from Ramon Rius’ bakery. The POUM had seized a building that housed a bank on its first floor (Caja de Ahorros y Montepío de Lérida) and the Casino Principal, a social institution for the local bourgeoisie, on the second.

[Picture 5A here]

Early in May 1937, Orwell was sent to the Aragon front. Ten days later he was shot in the neck by a sniper, and was sent to Lleida for medical treatment.

•“I was five or six days in Lérida. It was a big hospital, with sick, wounded, and ordinary civilian patients more or less jumbled up together. […] Two militiamen on leave, whom I had met my first week at the front, cam in to see a wounded friend and recognized me. They were kids of about eighteen. They stood awkwardly beside my bed, trying to think of something to say, and then, as a way of demonstrating that they were sorry I was wounded, suddenly took all the tobacco out of their pockets, gave it to me, and fled before I could give it back. How tipically Spanish! I discovered afterwards that you could not buy tobacco anywhere in the town and what they had given me was a week’s ration”

•George Orwell. Homage to Catalonia, Chapter XII.

By late Spring of 1937, Republican alliances had shattered, and the POUM, accused of collaborating with the Fascists, had been outlawed in Barcelona. Orwell returned to the area only to be forced into hiding by a different communist faction then in power. Eventually, he and his wife slipped over the border into France.