Original subtitles

I'm crossing Europe with a strikingly modern edition

of Bradshaw's Continental Handbook, dated 1936.

Empires have been swept away by revolution

and a dozen new nations have embarked optimistically on independence.

Technology has leapt forward.

Aeroplanes and motor cars connect with trains

in a transport network which spans the globe.

Jazz and cinema entertain the industrial masses who work, live

and play under the bright lights of the great metropolises.

But across the continent, fascists and communists battle to govern Europeans,

whose fragile peace will once again be shattered by war.

According to my Bradshaw's Continental Handbook 1936,

"This ancient kingdom of Spain well deserves to be visited by tourist

"and businessman on account of its exceptional climate,

"its glorious and historical monuments

"and its vast natural resources."

And as a holder of a Spanish passport, I say, "Hear, hear."

But in the very year of my guidebook,

the political weather changed from tempestuous to violent.

And international visitors were arriving as volunteer soldiers

and war correspondents.

Intellectuals like George Orwell

and adventurers like Ernest Hemingway.

My route through this turbulent time will begin in Old Castile

at the heart of Spain

in the historic university city of Salamanca.

I'll travel east to Avila...

..then explore the Spanish capital, Madrid.

Next, I'll head north-east to Zaragoza.

I'll visit Huesca

and finish high in the Pyrenees on the French border at Canfranc.

On my journey, I'll come face-to-face

with Picasso's harrowing masterpiece...

In my opinion, I think it's the most important painting of the 20th century.

..visit the lost station of the Pyrenees...

Everything stops, there are no more trains, and we are closed to the rest of Europe.

..put my best foot forward in Aragon...

..and uncover my family's secret political files.

This is going to tell me a great deal about my father

I didn't know before.

Thank you very much.

"Following the victory of the Republican Party

"at the elections of April 1931,

"King Alfonso the 13th quit Spain," says my guidebook.

"All royal property was confiscated and amongst the first decrees

"was the separation of church and state.

"Public buildings intended for religious observance

"now belong to the nation."

My father was a young, idealist, left-wing don

at the University of Salamanca, which will be my first stop.

And he welcomed these volcanic changes.

But monarchists, landowners and the church were incensed.

And by mid-1936, my guide book was out of date.

Army generals like Francisco Franco had attempted a military coup d'etat

and a brutal civil war had begun.

I'm beginning my journey in the city where more than 80 years ago,

my father was blissfully happy...

..alas, only briefly,

and in love with its magnificent historic centre.

Salamanca is La Dorada, The Golden City,

named for its glowing sandstone.

And my heart sings every time I set foot there.

Salamanca really has a rare beauty.

Two medieval cathedrals perched on a hill,

reflected in the river, with a Roman bridge.

And the stone has been worked into beautiful works of art.

The two cathedrals have fused together,

despite the contrast between austere 12th-century Romanesque

and the grand Gothic of the 16th.

ORGAN PLAYS

And opposite is the city's university,

where my father became an assistant professor of law in 1934.

Founded in 1218, it's the oldest seat of higher learning in Spain.

The University of Salamanca is older than my own Cambridge.

Amongst these hallowed cloisters,

great minds have wrestled for 800 years

with the mysteries of the universe.

And that has sometimes brought them into friction with the authorities.

In 1572, the theologian Fray Luis de Leon

was seized from his lecture hall by the Spanish Inquisition.

And after four and a half years of imprisonment and torment,

he returned to his classroom and coolly resumed with the words,

"As I was saying..."

In the turbulent days when my father taught in the university,

academia's claim to freedom of speech again brought conflict.

This time with the generals who had recently staged the coup d'etat

and established their national headquarters here

amongst the temples of the intellect.

In the year that my guide book was published,

with Franco's forces in control of the city,

the university's rector took a surprising stand.

Severiano, hello.

The university's historian is Severiano Delgado.

The rector of the university at the time, Miguel de Unamuno,

tell me about him.

When there is a military uprising, what is Unamuno's reaction to that?

Why did Miguel de Unamuno support Franco's coup?

And there had been strikes and there had been many killings,

so he might think that a restoration of order was a good thing.

Rather than restoring calm and order,

Franco's men began to murder large numbers of alleged opponents.

Seeing that brutality,

Unamuno regretted his support for the regime.

Here in the city where the nationalists were headquartered,

in a grand chamber filled with Franco's officers,

he denounced the regime in a speech remembered to this day.

Tell me what happened here in October 1936.

Yes. This is published in this British literary magazine.

My father gives a very dramatic account of events.

He wasn't here, but he says,

"You will win," talking to Millan Astray, "but you will not convince."

"You will win because you possess more than enough brute force.

"But you will not convince because to convince means to persuade.

"And in order to persuade,

"you would need what you lack - reason and right in the struggle.

"I consider it futile to have besought you to think of Spain.

"I have finished."

Now, what do you think of that account?

As an historian, what do you think?

What do you know happened?

He's written here some notes in pencil.

So it seems to you that he did actually use these words -

"To win is not to convince."

Yes. Yes, of course.

What was the reaction in the auditorium?

How did this turbulent event end?

Just a little more than two months after this event? Yes.

The repression against which Unamuno had protested grew and spread.

As Franco's forces advanced across the country,

they seized personal documents of those they called foes of Spain,

accumulating the evidence here in Salamanca.

Yes. All of this? Yes. Thousands and thousands.

Severiano, like you. Yes.

And what does this say? That he's... that he's a member of a trade union?

Is that what that means? Yes.

And what happened to your grandfather?

A sort of slave labour. Slave labour, yes.

On this card.

Here. P, P, P...

Portillo, Lopez. Portillo, Lopez.

Portillo, Luis.

Here.

Two cards. Two cards.

This one tells me that he was a lieutenant

and this is to do with his legal work, isn't it?

But these give us very little detail about him.

There are more documents?

I recognise my father's signature.

These are documents I've never seen before.

What... What are they?

Who is applying for a job?

He's setting out really his, erm, his curriculum vitae, his CV.

Good heavens. That is amazingly interesting. And here...

You'd recognise the resemblance, would you? Yes.

So this is the Alliance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals In Defence Of Culture.

Yes. Madrid, 1936.

So this would be sufficient

to make my father an enemy of the Franco regime?

Absolutely amazing.

No, I did not.

I knew about the cards, but I didn't know there were all these other documents here.

This is going to tell me a great deal about my father

I didn't know before.

Thank you very much.

Today, students at the university that my father loved

are still very conscious of the stand taken by Miguel de Unamuno.

Unamuno, he fought for his ideas.

He just stood up for himself.

And I feel like that's...

That's an incredible thing to do.

And even though he knew the consequences were going to be so strong,

he still did what he thought was right.

Let me share with you, my father, Luis Portillo, was on the Republican side.

He had five brothers on Franco's side.

Does any of you have that experience in your family?

Any divisions in your families during the civil war?

Not division, but episodes that are related to the civil war, yes.

My grandmother was a seven-year-old child when the civil war broke out

and she remembers the sound of the gunfire

when Republicans were executed in the walls of the cemetery.

Do you talk about these things in your family

or do you prefer not to talk?

We do. We do talk about these things.

I think nowadays we can have a more academic approach to the war.

We can study it as an historical event.

But if we talk with people who lived it,

it's a more personal experience and I think it's more difficult.

"The Plaza Mayor", says Bradshaw's,

"is one of the finest squares in Spain."

To which I say, bah, it is THE finest.

What other square is as beautiful or well-proportioned as this?

And imagine in the 1930s, in the corner cafes here,

the artists and writers and poets meeting.

And now it is a place for families.

And every person in Salamanca takes a daily walk here,

so that unlike many other places, here, all the generations are mixed.

Old and young coming together.

From the plaza, I'm heading to the city's market,

excited to sample one of Spain's most famous delicacies,

said to have its origins here in Salamanca.

Hola, que tal? Hello, how are you?

Me pondria una pequena racion de jamon?

Racion de jamon? Perfecto. Algo de beber?

Una cana, por favor. Una canita.

Here is the ham. Oh, that's delicious.

And here's la cana. Thank you very much.

That's absolutely superb. It's fantastic.

So sweet, so moist.

It's wonderful.

Why is it that Salamanca ham is so good?

It's so good because of the weather,

the typical weather between the mountains.

That is the perfect weather to make the ham.

Slicing wafer-thin slivers of ham is an art I've often admired.

Gracias.

And I'm keen to try.

So, now, what are your suggestions?

You have to put the straight knife. Straight.

And slowly start cutting it.

Oh, no, no, no, no. That hasn't worked at all.

Look at that. That's pathetic. Right, let's try it again.

I'd better improve soon, as a leg of ham is eye-wateringly expensive.

What do you think of that? That's quite good.

Would you be willing to eat a slice that I have cut?

Yes, no problem. No problem. Off you go.

It's fantastic, isn't it? Very nice. Fantastic.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

I'm leaving Salamanca on an intercity train

heading east on Spain's state-owned railway network, Renfe.

In the decade before my guidebook was published,

Spain had begun to open up as a tourist destination.

The country had been neutral during the First World War

and had escaped its devastation, remaining unspoilt and exotic.

My next stop is the remarkable citadel of Avila.

Built between the 11th and the 14th centuries,

it's one of northern Spain's most magnificent monuments

and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

These city walls, highlighted in my Bradshaw's,

are the best preserved in Spain.

Two and a half kilometres long with 87 semi-circular towers.

They're now a picture postcard, but they were built, of course,

to protect a population terrified of attack.

With the change in the technology of war and greater political stability,

people at last dared to live outside the walls.

And luckily for us, once redundant, they were not demolished,

as in so many other places.

Avila is the birthplace of St Teresa,

a much-loved Spanish mystic,

and has drawn pilgrims and visitors for centuries.

Today, tourism is hugely important.

In Avila, I'm staying in a parador.

It's a sort of hotel that is often located in a heritage building.

And this one looks suitably ancient, historic and austere.

For my Spanish breakfast, savoury - bread with tomato,

and sweet - little fingers of deep-fried batter called churros,

which I will dip into chocolate.

An advertisement in my 1936 Bradshaw's guide.

"Life is pleasant in Spain under its continuous sunshine.

"The country where each visitor is welcomed as a friend.

"An essentially varying country

"where the contrasts and peculiarities banish monotony

"and can at all times please the most opposed tastes."

The smartest thing that Spain ever did

was to keep out of the First World War,

enabling it to trade with all the belligerent powers.

And during the 1920s the economy grew,

although hampered by the country's isolation

and lack of industrialisation.

Maybe tourism could help.

And this rather literal and comic translation into English

could only add to the allure of this unknown country.

Spain has boomed as a tourist destination

and today it's the second most visited country in the world,

welcoming 82 million visitors a year.

The Spanish state owns around 100 paradors across the country

and Oscar Lopez Agueda is head of the enterprise.

Oscar. Hi, Michael. What a pleasure.

So when did this idea of paradors,

particularly using heritage buildings, begin?

Actually, it was at the beginning of the 20th century.

It was 1910 with the king, Alfonso the 13th.

He tried to open Spain to bring some tourism,

to use all our heritage - castles and monasteries and things like that,

to do some hotels for quality tourism.

Is this really the first time that Spain directs itself to attracting tourists?

Well, actually yes, because, you know, the 19th century,

it was a hard century in Spain.

It was at the end of the old empire, the Spanish empire,

and it was a poor country.

So we tried to open Spain to make it known to bring people to Spain.

I mean, the parador represents a more sophisticated tourism than the beach holiday.

Yes, of course. It's a different way of tourism, yeah.

After my overnight stop in Avila,

I'm continuing my journey east towards the capital.

I'm now heading for Madrid, which the guidebook tells me,

"is a fine, attractive city.

"The capital of the kingdom of Spain since 1560

"during the country's so-called golden age.

"In recent years, Madrid has been undergoing a transformation.

"The Cortes, or parliament, voted a subsidy

"of eight million pesetas a year for ten years for this purpose."

Spain had over the centuries descended

from being a gold-rich imperial power

to a developing country with enormous inequality

and an agricultural system that was quasi-feudal.

At least Madrid could be made to resemble a modern capital.

Madrid lies almost exactly in the geographic centre of the country.

And whilst it's not as old as Spain's most historic cities,

since becoming the capital in the 16th century

it's acquired real elegance and beauty.

The Parque de El Retiro, the pleasant retreat,

lies right in the heart of Madrid and is vast.

It was planned back in the 1550s

and once contained a royal palace and a theatre.

And I think even today, in the elegant walkways

and the hundreds of statues and the fountains and the crystal palace,

you can tell that its origins were regal.

Once an exclusive park for the Spanish monarchy,

since the late 19th century

it's been a sanctuary for ordinary Madrilenos

to escape the hectic city and unwind.

I think I'll leave it to them.

At the beginning of the 20th century,

Madrid was developing into a modern metropolis.

The first metro line opened in 1919

to serve the city's rapidly expanding population.

And above ground, a new city plan was transforming the capital.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the modernization of Madrid

was this, the Gran Via, a gash of modernity

driven through the ancient heart of the city.

A boulevard of cinemas and hotels,

an avenue to compare with Berlin or Paris or New York.

At a stretch.

Modelled on the grand American towers of the period,

the Telefonica building, completed in 1929,

was like nothing ever seen before in Spain

and was one of the first skyscrapers in Europe.

It was Madrid's telephone exchange

and the headquarters of the state-owned phone company.

At the time of my guidebook, it took on another role.

Reyes. Hi, Michael. Welcome to the Telefonica building.

Very beautiful it is. Thank you so much.

Would you like to go up? Yes, please. Let's go.

Reyes Esparza, archivist for the Telefonica Foundation,

is taking me to the top of this iconic building.

Good heavens. Reyes, that is a magnificent view.

Amazing.

I mean, not just the city, but I can see there the Plaza Mayor,

obviously, at the heart of the old city.

I can see the royal palace over there. The opera.

What did the Republic use the building for during the civil war?

For many people outside Spain, their view of the Spanish Civil War

is through the eyes of Ernest Hemingway and of course, George Orwell. Of course.

This building must have been quite a target during the civil war. It was.

So was it badly damaged?

How do you think Madrid survives?

For two years, the world was appalled by repeated attacks

on Madrid from Franco's forces, terrorising the population.

But it was the bombing of a small town in 1937

that provoked unprecedented international outrage

and inspired one of the 20th century's

most shocking works of art.

Picture in your mind's eye, if you would,

the artist Pablo Picasso.

I bet you see him wearing a blue striped T-shirt like a French sailor.

And he lived most of his life in France.

But he was actually thoroughly Spanish.

And the reason that he wouldn't even visit Spain after 1936

was that he disapproved of the regime of General Franco.

And indeed, he stipulated

that his greatest painting, Guernica, or Gernika,

should not come to Spain for as long as the dictator lived.

But those were other times, and today this masterwork is in Madrid.

I'm visiting the Museo Reina Sofia,

Spain's national museum of 20th century art.

After many years in its own exile, Picasso's painting Guernica

is now displayed here in a gallery of its own.

I'm meeting Rosario Peiro, the head of collections.

Rosario. Hello.

Hello.

Very nice to meet you. I'm Michael.

People all over the world will have seen photographs of this painting,

but you have to come and see it in person, don't you,

because it's so huge, so overwhelming

and actually so upsetting, don't you think?

It is, actually, it's very upsetting.

I've seen people, especially kids are very afraid of it sometimes.

First of all, tell me about the event that caused the painting.

On the 26th of April there was a small town

in the Basque country called Guernica.

It was a Monday and had its market day.

And at about four when everybody was kind of shopping and selling stuff,

it was completely bombed,

to the point that half of the town was completely destroyed.

And of course, a lot of civilians died.

NEWS REPORT: Scene of the most terrible air raid our modern history yet can boast.

This mass aerial attack was carried out

by Franco's fascist and Nazi allies on the defenceless Basque city.

In Spain, for the first time in Europe,

civilians were targeted in war.

The news shocked the world.

None was more angered than Pablo Picasso,

who had recently been commissioned to create an artwork

for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World Fair in Paris.

How long did it take him to paint it?

More or less a month. A month and a week. Yes.

So from April, when the bombing occurs,

to June, when the painting is on display?

Yeah. A very short period of time. Extraordinary.

What do you think of the elements of the painting?

The fire, the lantern, the light bulb, the bull, the horse?

What should we make of these? Well, it's a painting about war.

It's a painting about death and suffering.

And here the woman is carrying all of this.

Women burning, women running away,

women crying because their baby's dead.

The only male figure here is dead

and actually it has, in a way, become a kind of statue.

And of course, the bull.

The bull looks at the spectator clearly and directly, saying, what do you think about that?

It's like it's asking you to kind of take a position

and I think this is the most important part,

or let's say the most political part of the painting.

You know, this kind of facing to the public and saying, look at me, look at this.

What is the place of this painting in the history of art?

Well, in my opinion,

I think is the most important painting of the 20th century.

It always speaks to the people.

It has a very specific story.

And the story with the painting

goes together with the story of the 20th century.

For me personally,

this painting depicts the event without which I would not exist.

And this is because the bombing of Guernica

persuaded the British government to admit some refugees,

some children, from the Basque region of northern Spain.

They came. Some of them went to Oxford, where my mother was an undergraduate.

She started to look after them.

When my father came as a refugee from the civil war, he went to Oxford,

met the refugee children, and through them met my mother.

Without Guernica, they would never have met.

That's very nice.

This wonderful winter garden used to be the train shed

of the old Atocha station in the days of steam and diesel.

It now serves merely as the entrance hall to the new terminal

from which the high-speed trains depart.

With about 3,000 kilometres of track,

Spain has the largest network of high-speed trains in Europe.

For me, that means that my 270km journey across the plains

will take just one hour and 20 minutes.

Thank you. Muchas gracias.

I'm on my way to Zaragoza, which my Bradshaw's tells me

was formerly the capital of the kingdom of Aragon.

And when Ferdinand of Aragon married Queen Isabella of Castile,

Spain was created in 1469.

In the Anglicised version of the name, Saragossa,

it's perhaps clearer that it was the city of Caesar Augustus,

the Roman Emperor.

So its history goes back at least until then.

Although it's the fifth largest city in Spain,

it's much neglected by foreign tourists,

even though it's very well-connected.

It's at the midpoint of the high-speed line

between Madrid and Barcelona.

And at the moment,

my train is travelling at 300km per hour.

I'm beyond the halfway point of my journey.

After a stop in Zaragoza I'll head up to the city of Huesca,

before ending by the border with France.

Situated on the River Ebro,

Zaragoza is one of Spain's most beautiful historic cities,

thanks to its Roman, Christian and Islamic past.

And inside the city's 17th-century cathedral,

Nuestra Senora del Pilar, is a hidden gem.

The work of one of Spain's most famous painters,

whose frescoes can be viewed for nothing.

Or be illuminated for a fee.

Let there be light.

The great Spanish painter Francisco Goya

was born near to Zaragoza in 1746,

and I imagine he must have been thrilled

to be asked to decorate parts of the new cathedral at the age of 25.

He went on to experience the brutal Napoleonic invasion of Spain

and produced a series of works on the catastrophes of war,

which are said to have been in Picasso's mind

when he painted Guernica.

Zaragoza is the capital of Aragon,

a region with a rich cultural heritage.

And it's not unusual to stumble across La Jota,

its energetic and unique folk dance.

TRADITIONAL SPANISH MUSIC

Stupendo. Gracias, gracias.

Natalia, that was absolutely wonderful.

Thank you. La Jota is such an elegant dance, isn't it?

What is its origin?

It's a bit hard to pinpoint, but many experts say that it was born

maybe in Persia, maybe some time around the ninth century,

and all those influences came all the way here to Aragon.

So many stringed instruments. I recognize the guitar. Yes.

What are the others? These ones are called bandurrias.

There's no name in English. These are lutes.

Are you Aragonese? Yes, I am.

And proud of La Jota? Yes, of course.

I would say most Aragonese people are proud because it's our heritage.

Uno, dos, tres, punto, arriba.

Uno, dos, tres...

TRADITIONAL SPANISH MUSIC

Uno, dos, tres, punto, arriba.

Uno, dos, tres, punto, arriba.

Perdon, el panico!

One, two, three.

APPLAUSE

It's a new morning and today I'll be exploring

the modern face of Zaragoza by tram.

One thing that some people don't like about trams

is the overhead wires, catenary in the terms of the trade.

But here in the centre of Zaragoza there are no overhead wires.

And the answer to the mystery is this metal recharging plate.

When the tram arrives in the station, a shoe descends,

it is recharged and boom - off it goes.

The tram system has been running only since 2013,

but transports 100,000 passengers a day in a city of only 700,000.

It's a huge local success, not least because the trams

are made in Zaragoza at the CAF factory.

Fernando. Michael, welcome to CAF. Thank you so much.

Let's start in the workshops. Super. Thank you.

Fernando Anoro is the general manager of the Zaragoza plant,

which has five huge workshops building trains and trams.

What was the origin of the company here in Zaragoza?

Well, we can say that our adventure begins in 1895

with two people, two guys.

They thought that maybe to build rolling stock

will be a good business.

What sort of products, in the early days?

They began with trams, mechanic trams,

or electric trams.

I'm using a guidebook from 1936

and Zaragoza found itself absolutely at the front line. Yeah.

So I suppose Zaragoza and the factory got drawn

into the civil war.

The factory was dedicated to war purpose, especially to refurbish

many different type of vehicles with military purposes.

But then, after the war, there must have been an urgent

need for reconstruction.

Yeah, the rolling stock in Spain was absolutely

practically destroyed,

and during the '40s it was necessary to renew this rolling stock.

And which countries are you supplying to now?

Main market is the Spanish market,

but now the British market is very, very important for us.

In this moment, I can say that one third of our order book

is for the British market.

CAF has supplied trains and trams to countries all over the world,

from Europe to Mexico, Brazil and Australia.

On the production line today are trains destined

for the north of England.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Welcome to the future of Northern Rail.

Travel, relax, enjoy.

Ah, well, Fernando, very, very smart.

The finished product.

It's not often that you get on a train in Zaragoza

and see the destination board, Barrow-in-Furness. Well...

I very much like these open trains.

I think they make people feel much more secure.

They can see all the way down the train.

It gives more space.

Could we have a look at the cab, please? Of course. Thank you.

Hello, Ruben. Hello, Michael.

Very good to see you. May I sit in the driver's seat, please?

Yeah, of course. This is very smart.

Wonderful.

Now,

if we were going to drive a train, what would we do?

Ah... we need to send a direction.

Push the DSD button.

I'm going to go... Forward? Forwards.

Yeah.

LOUD BEEPING

And close the doors.

Close the doors.

FAST BEEPING

Don't forget the horn.

HORN SOUNDS THREE TIMES

So I'm going to ease power back... Yeah.

..and the train moves.

Yeah. Ole!

The train is absolutely lovely,

it's got a beautiful, smooth movement to it.

I don't want to go through the doors at the end of the workshop,

so I'm going to stop it...

..there.

Fantastic. Very good.

Thank you very much. What fun.

I'm leaving this city from a station with a rather familiar name.

I'm travelling from Zaragoza to Huesca, cities which,

in the year of my guidebook, were held by Franco's forces.

This region was the front line between the Nationalists

and the Republicans in the Civil War,

and my train route runs close to those battle lines.

The Spanish Civil War was a struggle between political ideologies

like communism, fascism and democracy,

as the Second World War would be immediately after.

It's hard to understand now how the causes in Spain

attracted idealists from abroad, prepared to die,

men volunteering as soldiers

and women as nurses.

The trenches near Huesca were manned by militant socialists

and anarchist militias fighting for the republic.

Amongst them, many foreigners, including Englishman Eric Blair,

known to literature as George Orwell.

Best known today for the novels

Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four,

George Orwell also wrote Homage To Catalonia,

a memoir of his time fighting fascism

with the Marxist POUM party during the Spanish Civil War.

He saw action in the trenches outside Huesca,

some of which have been restored,

and I have the great honour of meeting George Orwell's son,

Richard Blair.

We're coming towards the trench,

which was obviously the trench of the republic.

Where were the fascist lines?

If we look out over here, over the town of Huesca itself,

the fascists were within the township itself

and the surrounding area,

and of course, this is where the Republicans were,

they were trying to take Huesca.

The generals would say, tomorrow we would have coffee in Huesca,

tomorrow we will have coffee in Huesca,

and it never happened because they never took Huesca.

Tell us what Orwell says about the conditions that he endured?

Very much like trench warfare anywhere in the world.

It was pretty disgusting.

If it rained, this would be like a quagmire, and it was cold.

The one thing he talked about is the cold.

He just said it got into his bones.

Your father had been at Eton College... Indeed.

..which is one of the most expensive and best schools in England.

Why had he teamed up with some Marxists? When he left school,

he joined the Indian Imperial Police Force,

was stationed in Burma,

and there he discovered that British imperialism wasn't really quite

what he thought it was, he disagreed with it,

and I think this really, to some extent,

set him on the road to socialism.

As a socialist, Orwell feared the spread of fascism across Europe.

He became a writer, and travelled to Spain as a war correspondent,

but once there, felt compelled to volunteer as a militiaman.

At the front, he quickly discovered the perils of war.

How did your father come to be wounded?

He was changing guard at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning,

and dawn was to his back, so he was silhouetted,

and of course, being as tall as he was,

he stood up, without thinking, and a sniper got him,

shot him through the neck.

Quite extraordinary, if I may say so,

to survive a shot through the throat. Yes.

The bullet had entered the left-hand side of his throat and passed out

through the lower side of his right.

It twanged a vocal cord,

but apart from that, he was uninjured.

Lucky man.

What did he have to say about the organisation of his side?

HE LAUGHS

Erm, I think...

I think it was fairly chaotic,

in a word.

They were given very old Mauser rifles,

the ammunition was poor,

and a lot of the cartridges just simply didn't work.

One of the things I find very moving about it is

he describes all this chaos, and he's very critical of lots of things

that happen on the Republican side,

but he lives a moment of socialism, which touches him very much.

Yes, that's in Barcelona.

At the beginning, when he first arrives,

everybody is equal, everyone calls each other comrade,

and it doesn't matter whether you're a street cleaner

or whether you're a CEO of a large company,

you're all the same, and he likes that.

This, of course, was disillusioned when he went back a few months later

during the, what they call the May riots, in Barcelona,

where everything was descending into chaos.

Bitter divisions split the left into rival factions

who fought each other.

Orwell's disillusionment grew and when his militia was outlawed

by the Soviet-backed communists, he fled Spain in fear of his life.

He goes on to write Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.

To what extent do you think his experiences

of viewing communism here, amongst other things, led to those books?

There is no question that his experience in Spain

was the genesis of what he wrote later.

And, in fact, he says so, that,

"What I experienced in Spain, the totalitarianism,

"which I came to hate, is all part and parcel of what I write."

And that comes out in both Animal Farm and, of course,

more importantly, in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Richard, I've had a few special moments in my life,

and this is one, sharing a trench,

just outside Huesca, with the son of George Orwell.

Thank you so much. Not at all.

From Huesca, I'm approaching the final leg of my journey,

which would take me up to the French border,

to a station that is revered.

My Bradshaw's 1936 advertises a railway route,

from London to Zaragoza,

via Paris, Bordeaux, Pau, near the Spanish border

and Canfranc in 29 hours.

That bold line was blasted

through the mighty Pyrenees Mountains in the 1920s,

at a time when Spain was determined to forge new international links.

I'm riding on those tracks today,

but with no hope whatsoever

of arriving even at Pau, let alone London.

But the name Canfranc is whispered today

in awe by one railway nerd to another, the world over.

It's a glorious journey along the valley of the River Aragon,

as the line takes me to the foothills of the Pyrenees.

El nombre de la estacion, Canfranc.

El nombre de la estacion, Canfranc.

You have to imagine that, for hours,

the train has been passing through remote places,

a few villages, many semi-derelict

and then we arrive at our destination.

A Versailles of a railway station.

A great rusting hulk,

like a Titanic stranded in the Pyrenees.

I'm meeting engineer and expert on Canfranc

Rocio Otero. Rocio!

Hello. I'm Michael. Nice to meet you.

It's a very exciting moment for me.

For a long time, I've wanted to visit Canfranc station.

But tell me, why did they build such a spectacular station?

Well, this station is like we're advertising

for people that came from Europe to Spain

and the station wanted to show

how big, modern and fancy we were at that period.

My 1936 guidebook reminds me, of course,

that you had to change train between Spain and France,

because of the different gauges.

So, give me a picture of what was going on here.

Just imagine a train coming from the tunnel from France or Europe

and all the people going through this building,

all the goods going through the building,

and a lot of movement between the two platforms.

Everything went through the building.

Even so, it's a huge building. What facilities did it have?

It had a big hotel. It had a post office.

The customs, it has also a hospital or a clinic.

It had a restaurant, too.

It was a very modern place compared to the other things

that were in this valley.

When built, this was Europe's second biggest railway station.

Its inauguration, in July 1928,

was a most lavish affair with the president of the French Republic

and Alfonso, the 13th King of Spain,

presiding at the celebrations.

Tell me, then, what happened to Canfranc station

with the coming of the Civil War in 1936?

Everything stops. The interchanges stop, too.

There are no more trains that connect with Europe

and we are closed to the rest of Europe.

My father left Spain through the Pyrenees.

Was Canfranc station used by Spaniards going into exile?

Not through the station, because it was closed by that moment.

They went through the passes on the mountains.

But during the Second World War,

the Jewish came through the tunnel,

escaping from Europe and then went to South America.

So, this was a Jewish escape route from the Holocaust. Mm-hm.

After the Second World War, the line deteriorated

and when a train derailed on the French side in 1970,

both the route and Canfranc station were abandoned.

Rocio, this looks like good news. They're working on the old station.

What's going on?

They are going to use the building for a hotel

and they are constructing a new train station

for a new train, too.

So, we will have again a nice connection with the rest of Spain

and probably with France, because they are programming

to rebuild the line in the French side.

Rocio, that is good news.

Although I feel privileged to have seen it

when I could still imagine it as a great railway station.

It's been sad to travel around Spain with a guidebook from 1936,

the year in which Spain's hopes for modernising and opening up

were extinguished by the Civil War.

Following the defeat of Franco's allies, Hitler and Mussolini,

Spain was left isolated behind the Pyrenees,

a lonely dictatorship in a Europe of democracies,

in which Picasso, Orwell and my exiled father could not set foot.

Since the return of free speech at the end of the 1970s,

Spain has experienced a transformation

in its infrastructure, social attitudes

and international reputation.

My feeling is that its golden age is now.

Next time in France,

I'll learn the details of a shunned Royal marriage...

Despite hundreds of invitations sent,

only 16 guests attended to the wedding.

Sixteen people for the wedding of the next King,

it's not very many, is it?

..get some va-va-voom on the racetrack.

I'm holding on for dear life.

Oh, I'm enjoying this! Oh, yeah!

..and discover how the showgirls of Paris influenced a fashion legend.

They saw the girls coming down, you know, from there.

You know, with the face that was beautiful.