A plaque in memory of George Orwell

The writer and journalist George Orwell (Motihari, India, 1903 – London, UK, 1950), author of works such as Homage to Catalonia (1938), Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), will have a literary plaque in Barcelona to commemorate him. It will be located in the lobby of the RACAB, Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona (La Rambla, 115), where Orwell lived the May Days of 1937. The unveiling event will take place on Tuesday 15 May at 10 a.m., with the participation of Jordi Isern, president of the RACAB, Miquel Berga, lecturer at Pompeu Fabra University, and Richard Blair, George Orwell’s son.

Orwell, a member of the POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification), spent three days on the roof of the Academy, above the Poliorama. He was part of a group that defended the party’s headquarters, located just across the street. He arrived in the Spanish Civil War at the end of 1936, joining the International Brigades to fight against fascism. From Barcelona, he went with the POUM to the front of Aragon, and in April 1937 he returned to the Catalan capital, where the conflict between the CNT-FAI and the POUM and the Government of the Generalitat broke out. Orwell was later injured on the Aragon front and recovered in Tarragona and Barcelona. When he returned to England, he wrote and published Homage to Catalonia, in which he described his experience of the Civil War and criticised Soviet-influenced communism.

He died of tuberculosis at the age of 46, leaving behind a long list of works. His most popular texts, however, are novels, especially Animal Farm, an allegory of the corruption of the socialist ideals of the Russian Revolution by Stalinism.