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Orwell in The Ramblas

Tuesday, 23rd October 2007

So we sat there, lazily drinking coffee and gazing across at the Teatro Poliorama, where the Englishman and his P.O.U.M. comrades were holed up for three "unbearable" days during the street-fighting:

Next door to the P.O.U.M. building there was a café with a hotel above it called the Café Moka. The day before twenty or thirty armed Civil Guards had entered the café and then, when the fighting started, had suddenly seized the building and barricaded themselves in. Presumably they had been ordered to seize the café as a preliminary to attacking the P.O.U.M. offices later. Early in the morning they had attempted to come out, shots had been exchanged, and one Shock Trooper was badly wounded and a Civil Guard killed. The Civil Guards had fled back into the café, but when American came down the street they had opened fire on him, though he was not armed.

"Homage to Catalonia".

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