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"The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty & a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency" (p.172)

The opening chapters in particular lead me to imagine Basil Fawlty going abroad, or possibly the travel programmes of my youth, the accommodation is terrible, the way the food and wine are served is unhygienic, everything is disorganised and late, the Spaniards don't even speak Spanish, and with the fascists 700 metres away can you even call it a war? No, it is "a comic opera with the occasional death" (p.34) as he is told.

His comment on a Jewish-Polish officer is that he speaks terrible English, for some curious reason I imagine that when inevitably Orwell was made a corporal that he spent most of his time teaching his men to speak English rather than Catalan.

Then after establishing an image of himself as fusty Englishman abroad and war as pantomime (no uniforms, terrible old rifles, awful ammunition, no maps, no artillery, no field glasses) he then looks at the broader political picture explaining the war as one of Revolution against fascism, in which the Communists pushed for fighting the war first and then having a revolution after - this approach was aiming to reassure the international community - while the Anarchists wanted to see the revolution accomplished first. Orwell explains how he began by backing the Communists in this regard but over time shifted to the Anarchist position believing it alone had the potential for weakening Franco by inspiring revolt in fascist held territories. In the Communist backed crushing of the Anarchists in Catalonia as a viable political force one can see the origins of Animal Farm.

In the middle of the book he is caught up in street fighting in Barcelona which leads into a discussion of its misrepresentation in the press on political grounds before he returns to the front where he gets shot. The food in the hospitals is plentiful and rich, but with the classic complaint of an English tourist to southern Europe: it is too greasy, food culture is changing even in Britain, a contemporary might instead praise the artisanal quality of such food and its regional authenticity, but back then it was just considered greasy (view spoiler)[ and lacking lard and beef dripping (hide spoiler)].

In contrast to Laurie Lee's A moment of war Orwell was not repeatedly arrested as a suspected spy, this was because he entered affiliated with the Independent Labour Party which itself was linked to the P.O.U.M. militia - an anarchist grouping. His account of fighting and non-fighting is impressionistic and fascinating, cold, hunger, and lack of sleep are more pressing dangers than bombs and bullets. Pretty much everything in Spain to his eyes is execrable (view spoiler)[ particularly the agricultural tools (hide spoiler)] apart from the people who he pretty much universally likes and admires.

The Spanish Civil war still seems to be in progress on various (non-military) fronts if not exactly raging, aside front that I think in several of Orwell's comments you can see the roots of 1984 and Animal farm.

Ken Loach's Spanish Civil War film "Land and Freedom" draws strongly upon Homage to Catalonia as a source, though it's main character is a working class, rather than upper class, Englishman.