Arturo Barea
| Arturo Barea | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Arturo Barea Ogazón 20 September 1897 Badajoz, Spain |
| Died | 24 December 1957 (aged 60) Faringdon, Oxfordshire, England |
| Resting place | All Saints Church, Faringdon 51°39′34.46″N 1°35′0.53″W / 51.6595722°N 1.5834806°WCoordinates: 51°39′34.46″N 1°35′0.53″W / 51.6595722°N 1.5834806°W |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Citizenship |
 Spain United Kingdom (from 1948) |
| Occupation | Writer, journalist, broadcaster |
| Spouse(s) | Aurelia Rimaldos (1924-1937) Ilse Pollak (1938-1957) (his death) |
Arturo Barea Ogazón (20 September 1897 – 24 December 1957) was a Spanish journalist, broadcaster and writer. After the Spanish Civil War, Barea lived in exile in the United Kingdom until his death.
Barea was born in Badajoz, of humble origins. His father died when he was four months old, so his mother, with four young children to support, worked as a laundress, washing clothes in the River Manzanares, while the family lived in a garret in the poor Lavapiés district of Madrid. Barea was semi-adopted by his aunt and uncle who were prosperous enough to send him to school. This resulted in his first experience of the class divisions that riddled Spanish society, when his own sister accused him of "acting the gentleman" while she worked as a servant. He left school aged 13 and got a job at a bank as an office boy and copyist, though did not become a fully paid employee for another year. He later quit after being fined for breaking a glass-plate desk cover.
Barea served his compulsory military service in Ceuta and Morocco, rising to the rank of sergeant in an Engineers regiment of the Spanish Army and seeing action in the Rif War. He began writing and published some poems. He then worked in an office registering patents (he had originally wanted to be an engineer), and in 1924, he married for the first time. He was a member of the Socialist UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores) and helped found the Clerical Workers Union at the start of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931.
On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in mid-1936 he organized a volunteer militia unit La Pluma ("The Pen") of office workers fighting under the UGT. Later, thanks to his knowledge of English and French, he worked as a censor at the Foreign Ministry's Press Office where he came to know Ernest Hemingway and many other foreign journalists covering the conflict. John Dos Passos, in a 1938 article published in Esquire, referred to Barea as "underslept and underfed". During the Siege of Madrid he joined the Radio Service broadcasting to Latin America, where he became known as An Unknown Voice of Madrid, every night telling stories about daily life in the besieged city. He also met the Austrian journalist Ilse Kulcsar (née Pollak), whom he would marry in 1938.
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