George Orwell never fulfilled his wish to visit Huesca when he fought in the Spanish Civil War but nearly 90-years on, his son Richard Blair has made the trip to unveil a statue in honour of his famous father. With a tender kiss, George Orwell’s son made a quiet gesture to his father: in a way, the writer had finally come home. When Orwell fought on the Republican side in the Spanish civil war, his division was poised to take the eastern city of Huesca.
Confident of victory over the Nationalists, the generals promised the troops they would be drinking coffee in the city the next day, but it never came to pass. Now, almost 90 years after the writer of Homage to Catalonia nearly lost his life in the 1936-1939 war, his son Richard Blair has finally realised his father’s wish to make it to Huesca – symbolically at least – when a bronze relief of Orwell was erected last month in his honour. Blair has led a campaign with Victor Pardo, a Spanish historian, to preserve his father’s memory in the eastern Spanish city.
Campaigners in Britain and Spain mounted a campaign to raise about €25,000 to fund the memorial. After the ceremony, Blair kissed his hand and put it on his father’s face. A band played Viva La Quinta Brigada, a Republican civil war song, but with the words changed to include the members of the Independent Labour Party contingent, of which Orwell was a member.
“As Orwell wrote in Homage in Catalonia, the generals were saying every day ‘tomorrow we will .