Spanish writer who fled civil war to a British village honoured in Madrid

Arturo Barea, loved for his books and BBC talks, has had a city square named after him in the Spanish capital near his former school

In March 1939, a hungry and haunted Spanish refugee arrived in England with his wife, a typewriter and a head still roiling with the carnage and squalor they had left behind.

“My life,” Arturo Barea would later recall, “was broken in two. I had no perspectives, no country, no home, no job.”

Related: Hotel Florida: Truth, Love and Death in the Spanish Civil War – review

Continue reading...