Homage to Catalonia: Barcelona to Aragon

In January 1937 Orwell's POUM centuria arrives in Alcubierre, a village just behind the line facing Zaragoza. On the third day rifles are handed out, and his turns out to be a German Mauser dated 1896. This is where the book's long months on the Aragon front begin. Alcubierre today is a small municipality in Huesca province, and the Sierra de Alcubierre, its highest point 822 m, rises about 3 km to the west.

Location precision: The book names Alcubierre as the arrival point; the pin marks the village, not the exact building.

Visitor guidance: A small village in the province of Huesca; the Sierra de Alcubierre rises to the west.

In February 1937 Orwell is stationed with the POUM militia near Huesca, which the Republicans besieged but never took. Life in the lines brings rats that "really were as big as cats, or nearly", and at the end of March he spends ten days in a "so-called" hospital at Monflorite. The city's refusal to fall gave the book one of its best-known lines: "If I ever go back to Spain I shall make a point of having a cup of coffee in Huesca."

Location precision: The front lines ran through the hills around the city; the pin marks Huesca itself.

Visitor guidance: Huesca is a working provincial city; a coffee there is the traditional tribute to Orwell's line.

Orwell arrives back in Barcelona on the afternoon of 26 April 1937. On 3 May a force of 200 police under Eusebio Rodríguez Salas, Minister of Public Order of the Government of Catalonia, goes to the Telefónica central exchange to take it from the CNT workers who controlled it. That move sets off the May Days: several hundred barricades go up across the city, and police units occupy roofs and church towers.

Location precision: The sources place the exchange at Plaça de Catalunya without a street number; the pin marks the square.

During the May Days Orwell spent three nights on the roof of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts, the La Rambla building that also houses the Poliorama Theatre. He was part of a squad defending the POUM headquarters in the building opposite, across the Rambla, now the Hotel Rivoli Rambla. A plaque in the lobby reads: "In this building George Orwell experienced the May Days of 1937, as recounted in 'Homage to Catalonia'".

Visitor guidance: The plaque is in the lobby of the Academy building on La Rambla; the roof is not generally open.

Later in the book Orwell moves between hospitals in Siétamo, Barbastro and Monzón. With only one train a day, he has "a day to put in to Barbastro" and finds pleasant tortuous streets, old stone bridges, and wine shops with great oozy barrels "as tall as a man". Behind the town is a cliff where innumerable doves live in the holes.

Location precision: The book describes the town's streets and river without naming a single spot; the pin marks Barbastro.

Visitor guidance: The old streets and stone bridges of Barbastro are easy to explore on foot.