The English writer committed to the Republic who wrote that he disliked olive oil at all

BarcelonaThe writer George Orwell hated porrón, probably olive oil as well, and he deeply missed tea, milk, chocolate, sugar, and bread. He also missed tobacco. These last were the elements in short supply during the Civil War, and especially in Catalonia during his time there, which was very short and intense: between December 26, 1936, and June 23, 1937, the day he had to flee Barcelona on a train or risk being arrested.

"My father never spoke to me about what he ate in Barcelona; neither did my mother," explains Richard Blair, the son of George Orwell (literary pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair) and Eileen Maud O'Shaughnessy, in London. "Neither of them ever spoke to me, but I must also say that they died when I was very young. My mother, when I was ten months old; Dad, when I was five." On the other hand, Richard Blair continues to explain, "I really like the gastronomy of Barcelona, ​​a city that I like very much despite the unpleasant experience I suffered, the theft of the watch I was wearing in May 2022." Blair highlights the date because every two springs, in even-numbered years, he visits Barcelona to coincide with the Orwell Day, an initiative promoted by a group of intellectuals interested in Orwell and the Civil War, supported by the CCCB, and consisting of free guided tours of the locations linked to Orwell's biography and conferences and talks, in which Richard Blair participates. "What he did to fight against fascism," explains the historian and also guide Fernando Casal.

It looked too much like a urinal

Now, having arrived here, why George Orwell, the author of the books Animal Farm either 1984 Did he hate the porrón? He left it in writing inTribute to Catalonia(La Magrana), the book in which he described in detail his experience, first in Barcelona, ​​​​and later, as a militiaman in the 29th Division, belonging to the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). First he described it: "A porrón is a kind of glass flask with a pointed arm from which a little stream of wine spurts out every time you raise the utensil upwards; that way you can drink from a distance, without touching the porrón with your lips, and you can pass it from hand to hand." And then he explained why he didn't like it: "As soon as I saw how the porrón worked, I imposed myself and demanded a glass. In my eyes, porróns looked too much like glass chamber pots for the sick, especially when they were filled with white wine."

He didn't speak so categorically about olive oil, but from what he wrote and repeated in Tribute to Catalonia, he contemplated the liquid gold (currently more than ever) with detachment and perhaps also with strangeness. This is how he expressed himself when referring to the foods that were in short supply: "Olive oil, which the Spanish used for half a dozen different things, was also rare. The queues of women waiting to buy olive oil were controlled by mounted civil guards who sometimes amused themselves by backing up their horses while looking at horses."

As for the ingredients that George Orwell particularly liked (tea, milk, chocolate, and sugar), his wife, the poet Eileen Maud O'Shaughnessy, brought him when she visited him in Barcelona, ​​​​where he stayed at the Hotel Continental. He particularly liked to drink tea with milk, and if he had tea for a while, he wasn't completely happy, because he preferred to drink it with milk and sugar, which were in very short supply. "Tea was a gift from the gods, though we had no milk, and rarely any sugar. Parcels were constantly being sent from England for the men in the contingent, but they rarely arrived; food, clothing, cigarettes—everything was rejected by the post or kept in France," Orwell wrote on the day his wife. The reference to shipments from England should be understood from the fact that he had joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in order to fight against fascism in Barcelona. Enrolled in a party, and not only with letters of introduction from the ILP, he was able to reach Barcelona and address one of the parties that had its headquarters on Barcelona's Ramblas, the POUM. Now, Orwell didn't know what those initials meant, nor did he understand everything else he found in the city, which was a lot, which is why in the book he wrote time and again that he had acted like a naive person and that he had only been driven by honesty to fight against what seemed to him a threat to Germany and to.

A cheese from La Boqueria

One day, walking along the Rambla from one building to another, the woman was staying at the Hotel Continental, while the POUM offices were opposite the Poliorama Theatre, next to the Café Moka, and the pension for the militiamen was at the Hotel Falcón (the current Andreu Nin Library), and Orwell was also at the Merc. He mentions the name of Boquería or Mercado de San José, and adds that he had a coffee and bought a goat's cheese. dominated the right side of the Rambla (the PSUC, the Assault Guards, and the Republicans) did not attack the POUM offices, also called Casa Lenin. In the barracks, there was only one other Englishman, and no one, not even any officer, spoke French. In most other countries, how easy it is to make friends in Spain!

Generous and unpunctual

And he hammered the point home with more quotes from the same book. "Spanish generosity, in the ordinary sense of the word, is sometimes almost cloying. If you ask a Spaniard for a cigarette, he'll force you to keep the whole pack. Besides, there is generosity in a deeper sense, a genuine open-mindedness, the existence of which I have repeatedly verified in different circumstances."

He also saw flaws, such as a lack of punctuality and a lack of knowledge of how to wage war. "Spaniards are good for many things, but not for waging war. All foreigners are astonished by their inefficiency, and above all by their maddening lack of punctuality. There is one word that no foreigner can avoid learning: mañana. […] From a meal to a battle, it doesn't start on time."

Finally, when he arrived in June 1937, after Orwell had been to the Aragon front several times and had been wounded, he learned in Barcelona that the POUM had been outlawed and that the act was retroactive, because all those who had been part of it were persecuted, imprisoned, and killed. See at the Hotel Continental. They soon managed to escape from the city. They took the train and went straight to Banyuls de la Marenda, where they got off the train and the first thing they did was not eat, but buy some tobacco. and buy as many cigars and cigarettes as my pockets could hold." And what did they do next? "Then we went to the bar and had a cup of tea, the first tea with fresh milk we'd had in months." He drank with the disappointment of having been chased out of Hoy. 88 years later, there is no commemorative plaque on the Rambla commemorating his feat, but the Café Moka, in the basement, remembers him with a room dedicated to Eric Arthur Blair, who signed his books with the pseudonym George Orwell.