In May 1937, Barcelona experienced a civil war within a civil war. A violent episode known as the Fets de Maig - the May Days - which lasted from May 3rd to 7th, when the streets of the city centre became the scene of a battle pitting the anarchist militia fighters of the CNT and the non-Stalinist communists of the POUM against the forces of order of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the militia of the PSUC, UGT and Catalan State. An exceptional witness, and at the same time protagonist, was George Orwell, who, rifle in hand, spent three nights on the roof of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts, the building on La Rambla where the Poliorama Theatre is located.
Orwell, who at the time was enrolled as a militiaman in the POUM, was part of a squad that defended his party's headquarters, located in the building opposite, across the Rambla (now the Hotel Rivoli Rambla), from the attack mounted by the forces of order, including the Civil Guard, which was located in the building right next door (where the Moka Cafe now is). The writer himself recorded it all in his book Homage to Catalonia, the memoir of his experience of the Spanish Civil War, in which he saw action on the Aragón front and in the city of Barcelona itself.
The city, which has already paid tribute to Orwell by naming a square after him in 1996 arising from the demolition of several buildings in the lower Barri Gótic - and which, in an irony of fate for the author of 1984, was the first space in the city to have video surveillance cameras installed - has this Wednesday formalised its own homage to Orwell's vigil in the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona (RACAB), where he kept watch on the roof - there is an astronomical observatory here - with the unveiling, in the lobby of the building, of a plaque dedicated to the writer and journalist George Orwell. Among those present were Orwell's son, Richard Blair - it must be remembered that George Orwell was the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair - as well as the president of the RACAB, Jordi Isern, and the Pompeu Fabra University professor Miquel Berga.
The plaque, commissioned by the Barcelona city council's Democratic Memory area, commemorates the dramatic days spent by Orwell - born Motihari, Burma, in 1903; died London, United Kingdom, in 1950 - in the well-known Rambla building: "In this building George Orwell experienced the May Days of 1937, as recounted in 'Homage to Catalonia'". Once every two years, the George Orwell Society organizes an historical tour of places that were significant in Orwell's journey to Spain to fight against fascism. This route, led by George Orwell's son, Richard Blair, and Quentin Kopp, son of Orwell's commander (Georges Kopp), starts in Barcelona, commemorating the May Days of 1937, and ends in Aragón.