ABSTRACT
George Orwell was one of the few foreign volunteers who actively participated in the Spanish Civil War and had the courage to condemn in clear terms, the abuses of power and the corruption of institutions on the Republican side. Moreover, it was Orwell who would denounce the manipulation of information to which the English newspaper reader was being subjected. In his renowned essay, ‘Spilling the Spanish Beans’, published immediately after his return to England and with the memories still fresh in his mind, he did not hesitate to deplore the propagandist press:
The Spanish war has probably produced a richer crop of lies than any event since the Great War of 191418, but I honestly doubt, in spite of all those hecatombs of nuns who have been raped and crucified before the eyes of Daily Mail reporters, whether it is the pro-Fascist newspapers that have done the most harm. It is the left-wing papers, the News Chronicle and the Daily Worker, with their far subtler methods of distortion that have prevented the British public from grasping the real nature of the struggle.2
