Forgotten Stories From Spain

The True Story of the Canadian Doctor and Ambulance driver that came to help a city in exodus. Try to imagine that the city of Malaga is to be evacuated overnight. 150.000 people will have to walk 200km along the coastal road in search of a safe refuge whilst being pursued by Italian tanks, bombed by German aircraft, and shelled by Rebel Nationalist ships. Unarmed men, women, and children will be shot from planes or killed by blasts from the boats that pursue them off-shore, their bodies will be left at the roadside, abandoned to the chaos and inhumanity of adults at war. There will be little food, transport, or fresh water. Nourished only by hope and driven by fear, exposed to the elements and enemy fire, they will walk through the day and the night. Many will be too weak to reach the safe port of Almería and will only survive because an ambulance and a Canadian doctor comes to help. A doctor who will later be accused of spying and betrayal, and will be unwillingly pushed out of Spain by the very people he had come to assist. The Forgotten Stories from Spain Series brings you accounts of human bravery and spirit at a moment of unleashed cruelty during the Spanish Civil War. Stories of co-operation that have a universal message that remains as relevant to the world today, as it was in Spain during the 1930s.

In 1937, George Orwell spent six months witnessing the rise and fall of a popular revolution on the streets of Barcelona and Catalonia. Alone amongst his contemporaries, Orwell understood what the success or failure of that Spanish Revolution would mean for the rest of the world. 1984 And The Spanish Civil War explores the background to the Civil War and the hidden anarchist revolution within a revolution. As Orwell arrives in Catalunya, he observes something bright and new in the world. But when Orwell returns from fighting on the front, he is confronted by the Communists conducting a misinformation campaign against this revolutionary spirit and he is forced to flee from their purges. He returns home to England, where he begins to write his account, but finds few are prepared to listen. In order to tell his story, he writes literally (Homage to Catalunya), then when that fails, he adopts the structure of allegory (Animal Farm) and finally that of a dystopian fictional Britain in 1984. Yet publication is a constant struggle for Orwell in a world that refuses to criticize the role of the USSR. Though he dies in despair, his words are not lost, for their message is picked up once more on the streets of the same country he fought for back in the 1930's.