In Europe

republicans waited until their own troops were well trained, Franco would have encountered no resistance at all.
    The front line Orwell was sent to lay within sight of Zaragoza, a narrow strip of lights ‘like the portholes of a ship’. Little happened in the months that followed, except for the occasional attack by night. ‘In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles and the enemy. In the winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order, with the enemy at last.’ In lieu of ammunition, the opposing parties exchanged volleys of words: ‘
Viva España
!
Viva Franco
!’ Or: ‘
Fascistas – mari-cones
!’ In the long run a special shouting unit was even set up, and on the republican side this catcalling was raised to a fine art. Orwell describes how, on an icy cold night, someone from a neighbouring trench shouted to his fascist neighbours across the way only what he – ostensibly – was having to eat. ‘“Buttered toast!” one heard his voice echo through the dark valley. “We're just sitting down to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!”’ No one on either side had actually seen toast or butter for weeks or even months, but mouths watered along both sides of the front.
    In April 1937 Orwell returned to Barcelona: in three and a half months the city had completely changed. Now there were normal avenues along which the rich, dressed in elegant summer attire, drove their shiny cars, and along which officers in the well tailored khaki uniforms of the People's Army strolled, the automatic pistols that were almost impossible to find at the front hanging from their belt clips. It was as though there had never been a revolution. The bourgeoisie had simply put on overalls and laid low for six months.
    What shocked Orwell the most was the hardening of the political climate. At the front he had never noticed any rivalry between anarchists, communists and other political factions. In faraway Barcelona, however, it seemed that a systematic campaign had been set rolling to discredit the anarchist and POUM militias, in favour of the People's Army. No more heed was paid to the muddied soldier home from the front. The radio and the communist press passed along the most malicious rumours aboutthe ‘poorly trained’ and ‘undisciplined’ militias, while the People's Army – in accordance with the best practices of Soviet propaganda – was systematically referred to as ‘heroic’. In actual fact, it was the militias which had held the front lines for more than six months, while the soldiers of the People's Army were receiving their training behind the lines.
    Like so many international volunteers, Orwell had no idea at first what kind of a war it was in which he found himself. He had simply gone to Spain to fight ‘against the fascists’ and had ended up more or less by accident in the POUM militia. It was only there that he saw that a revolution was underway
within
the republic as well, that because of that war the anarchists had been forced to surrender one revolutionary ‘asset’ after the other; in this internal struggle, the communists were not on the side of the revolution; on the contrary, they were on the side of the extreme right. In both Madrid and Barcelona, countless battles were fought for control over certain organisations and committees. The number of killings back and forth steadily increased, and slowly the anarchist ministers lost their grip on their followers.
    These internal tensions came to a head in spring 1937. Ever since the coup, the Telephone Building in Barcelona had been in anarchist hands. An anarchist collective listened in on all telephone conversations, and if a conversation did not please the listener, the connection was simply broken. At one point that became too much, even in revolutionary Barcelona. On Monday, 3 May, the communist police commissioner and his men tried to storm the building. That resulted in a gun battle, and soon barricades were thrown up. The communists moved into Hotel Colón, diagonally opposite the Telephone Building.
    There was grim fighting in the streets in the days that followed, with the communists and the police on one side, the anarchists and left-wing radicals on the other. The POUM, which had a considerable following in Barcelona, was one of the first to man the barricades. In the end, in a radio broadcast, the anarchist minister Frederica Montseney ordered her people to stop