"I’m pretty sure he arrived in Spain without any grand ideas of being part of a revolution, and quite simply wanted to fight against fascists." He was a social

"I’m pretty sure he arrived in Spain without any grand ideas of being part of a revolution, and quite simply wanted to fight against fascists." He was a socialist before going to spain, but his idea was to go there as a journalist. But once there, he felt he had to activly take arms to fight fascism. (and like others mentioned, he joined not a anarchist, but a socialist militia, but not one under sowjet control, so he later experienced first hand, how the sowjets dealt with competition, which lead to "animal farm" and 1984) But he did also met many anarchists and the differences between anarchists and socialist militias were rather blurry for the people in the trenches anyway. What I really like about Orwell, as opposed to the usual glorifying propaganda - he just wrote down what he saw. The good and the bad. He did not close his eyes to the ugly side of the revolution (trash everywhere for example)