Late in 1936, Orwell travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalists. He was forced to flee in fear of his life from Soviet-backed communists who were suppressing revolutionary socialist dissenters. The experience turned him into a lifelong anti-Stalinist.

George Orwell travelled to Barcelona in 1936 to report on a civil war. When he arrived, he decided the best way to help would be fight for the cause. He enlisted and was sent to the front. A 100 days later, he was wanted as a fascist spy and pursued out of the country by the communists.

Perhaps the most famous of those that fought in Spain is George Orwell. For the eight months he was in Spain, Orwell didn’t fight with the International Brigades but instead with POUM, a tiny anti-Stalinist militia that he joined largely by chance.

Orwell was one of the many thousands of European intellectuals and workers who had set out for Spain in 1936 to defend the twice-elected Republic. They volunteered in the International Brigades, they joined militias of untrained field labourers and factory hands and fought on every major front in the war against fascism.