Plaça de George Orwell

This guide to Plaça de George Orwell in Barcelona traces why a Gothic Quarter square got its name from a writer who fought and was wounded here in the Spanish Civil War, then wrote Homage to Catalonia about the city's revolutionary turmoil. It follows the square's history as one of Barcelona's first fitted with surveillance cameras, and a 2002 guerrilla-theatre stunt staged beneath one of them. You'll also hear about the tangled steel sculpture locals nicknamed after an acid tab, and the six years the square spent with no official name at all.