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Homage to Catalonia is a personal account of George Orwell’s experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. Summary of the Book In 1936, a young journalist named Eric Arthur Blair journeyed to Spain to cover the Civil War. When he arrived in Barcelona, he was inspired by the feelings that were high in the atmosphere and took up arms to join the fight against the fascists. Years later, he’d return to the topic, penning one of his most famous books. Here, he outlines his experiences and observations as a soldier in the Civil War. Blair was greatly influenced by his experiences in the war, and they changed his writing forever. His writing took on a more political vein, as he reveals in his essays. He explains that his motivation for writing against totalitarian regimes and dictatorships arose from his experiences in the War, and that his sympathies lied mainly with the truth and men he fought alongside. The Spanish Civil War is what changed the man history remembers as George Orwell, giving the world of literature a juggernaut responsible for some of the greatest works against totalitarianism and dictatorships ever written. About George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair, better known to the world as George Orwell, was an English essayist, novelist and journalist. He is mostly remembered for his novels Animal Farm, Down and Out in Paris and London and 1984. He is considered to have inspired much of the late twentieth century dystopian culture, in fact, his work is considered so definitive that the world Orwellian has entered the language merely to describe totalitarian or authoritarian social practices.