Godcidently, the domain name orwelltoday.com was registered on the world-wide-web on June 7, 2000 which is -- to the day -- 51 years after 1984 was published on June 8, 1949.

Godcidently, as I'm typing this today, it's June 8, 2026 -- exactly 77 years since publication of 1984.

I've come to realize, over all these years researching Orwell for the website, how often our lives -- mine and George's -- crossed paths or connected. These Orwellian coincidences happen so often that I coined a new word for them -- "godcidences". Or as someone once said, A WORLD OF NO COINCIDENCES -- ONLY CLUES.

How, a person may wonder, did it come to be that I, a Canadian, ended up with a Spanish passport -- so I'll explain. As mentioned elsewhere on my bio, I and a friend flew to England and hitchhiked across Europe in the early 70s. We got jobs as secretaries near Stuttgart, Germany working as Auslander Arbeiters -- foreign workers -- for USAREUR, the United States Army in Europe. After my visa expired I returned to Canada, worked to save money, renewed the visa, and returned to Germany in September 1972. My new job didn't start for a few weeks so, with fellow-travellers met at youth hostels, I hitchhiked through France and Spain to Sitges south of Barcelona.

This is where the next stage of destiny begins wherein I met my future husband, Bob, at the beach. He'd stepped on a sea urchin while body surfing in the ocean and me and my friend carried him fire-chair-method to the first-aid station where dozens of needles were removed from his foot and hand. I bumped into him a few days later at a bar and, to make a long story short, we started hanging out and I invited him back to Germany where he could get a job. He had an old work-van that he and friends had driven down from England -- he's an Englishman -- and we drove to Germany in that -- stopping in Paris -- another Orwellian place -- along the way.

We worked at army bases in Ludwigsburg -- Bob as warehouseman -- and had an attic apartment in the "economy" meaning "in the town", and were paid in Deutsche marks not USA dollars. After ten months we earned vacation time and hitchiked down to Sitges for old times' sake. We pitched our pup tent at the campsite, beached all day and hit the bars at night and danced to the best Rock n Roll in the world, like THREE DOG NIGHT singing my sentiments exactly. While watching, see if you notice the lead singer's a doppelganger of Bob, as in his photo in my passport shown at top of page.

While under the influence of too much Sangria (I must admit) I mislaid my purse with passport in it. We went to the British embassy in Barcelona and had to wait a few days until the Canadian embassy in Madrid could send a new one. If I'd known then what I know now about George Orwell, and his adventures in Spain, it would have been interesting, while we were there, to visit his old stomping grounds in the Barcelona war zone of 1936. We were probably in the area of the Continental hotel and POUM office where he and wife Eileen worked, and the restaurants and cafes they frequented -- before all hell broke loose and Orwell got shot through the neck and almost died and was hunted down by Communists to be imprisoned or murdered.

Now, when a person goes to Spain, they can pay homage to Orwell in Barcelona at a plaza in his name.

Tucked away in the labyrinthine heart of Barcelona's Gothic Quarter, PLACA DE GEORGE ORWELL was created in 1989, when an entire block of housing was torn down. The creation of this, and other similar plazas, was conceived as a way of opening up the Gothic Quarter and presumably went hand in hand with the generalized beautification of the city, which took place during the years leading up to the Barcelona Olympics of 1992. For the first six years after its creation, the plaza didn't have an official name, and the locals started calling it Placa del Tripi in reference to the surrealist monument by Leandre Cristòfol, which stands in the middle of the square. The word "Tripi" is Spanish slang for a tab of acid, which is supposedly what the artist was on when he created the statue. The monument, which bears the rather unimaginative title of Monument, is a scaled-up version of a smaller piece that Cristofol created in 1935, which is on display in the MNAC museum on Montjuic. The statue, which is made of steel, concrete and wood, is supposed to represent a woman, although you'd be hard-pushed to see the resemblance. Little wonder then that the locals decided to rename it El Tripi.

Barcelona has several squares and parks which are named after foreigners. Some of them, such as PLACE DE JOHN LENNON or Jardins de Ghandi, seem to have been named simply due to the person's status or perceived importance on the world stage. In contrast, others are named as a homage to someone who is somehow associated with or connected to the city. Placa de George Orwell clearly falls into the second camp. Born in India in 1903, George Orwell, real name Eric Arthur Blair, studied at the famous British public school Eton College before training as a policeman and finally becoming a writer best known for literary works such as 1984 and ANIMAL FARM. He was also a journalist and wrote several non-fiction works and essays. Most of his novels reflect his left-wing political views, and in 1936, shortly after the onset of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell moved to Barcelona, where he joined the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) with the intention of fighting fascism. He left Barcelona in 1937 after being shot in the neck and badly injured while fighting in Aragon. After returning to England, Orwell wrote HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, which narrates his experiences in Barcelona and describes how a Communist power struggle almost derailed the Republican cause. After HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, Orwell's career went from strength to strength. In 1949, he published the seminal novel 1984, which tells of a totalitarian government that controls society through non-stop surveillance. Ironically, in 2001, PLACA DE GEORGE ORWELL had the dubious honour of being the first public square in Barcelona to be fitted with surveillance cameras.

When the passport arrived, we took the train back to Germany and for the next six months saved money for our emergent plan to backpack overland to India and beyond to Australia. In mid-February we hitchiked from Germany to Spain and in Barcelona boarded a ship (steerage class) to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria Island, where Bob had been before and wanted to return.

Below are maps of our route -- along the Hippie Trail -- from Spain to Australia. Cities where we stopped and stayed are circled in red.

In Canary Islands we tented at an ocean-front campground south of Las Palmas and, unbeknownst to me, I was close again to an Orwell place -- Morocco -- where Orwell lived for six months in 1938 while writing the book COMING UP FOR AIR. He'd moved to Marrakech, under doctor's orders (his wife's brother*) to recover from exhaustion and physical collapse after finishing HOMAGE TO CATALONIA about his experiences in Spain.

We left Las Palmas by ship (again through the strait and saw the Rock of Gibraltar) and continued sailing to Athens, Greece; then train to Istanbul, Turkey; then train to Tehran and Mashed, Iran; then bus to Herat and Kabul, Afghanistan; then bus to Peshawar and Lahore, Pakistan; then train to New Delhi, India; then plane to Kathmandu, Nepal; then plane to Calcutta, India; then plane to Bangkok, Thailand; then train to Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, Malaysia; then ship to Perth, Australia. From there we hitchhiked across the Nullarbor Plain then up to Brisbane and Townsville then down to Sydney where we worked a year and then flew home to Canada. I sponsored Bob for an immigrant status visa conditioned on us marrying within a year -- which we did. An Australian opal is my engagement ring.

On the last page of my Spanish passport, which was cancelled in Australia, I've placed my photo next to a photo of Orwell who I sometimes refer to as "the boss".

It's tough being an Orwell disciple and, without a sense of humour or ability to recognize godcidents from Orwell, it would be impossible to carry on. This includes an ability to survive in marriage by recognizing that it happened for a reason -- it was fate we met there in Spain. As I often tell Bob, if I hadn't married an Englishman and gone on all those trips to England, to visit his mother and family, I would never have been able to do the Orwell work. He's as much to blame for his lot in life being a proof reader, book buyer and enabler of Orwell research all these years.

The reality is is that I truly do believe that Orwell from heaven orchestrated the meeting between we two in Spain and has a twinkle in his eye that I've recognized it. Godcidents are no fun if the recipient doesn't see it and acknowledge it happening. I've been wanting to share this aspect of my inspiration and motivation for creating the ORWELL TODAY website and coming across the old passport compelled me to tell it now. I still don't know why Orwell chose me to bear the burden of spreading his nightmare 1984 message non-stop worldwide -- but I'm hippy happy he did.

All the best,
Jackie Jura, June 8, 2026

FREAKY HIPPY DAYS IN KATMANDU

NEPAL REMEMBERED

JACKIE'S HOMAGE TO ORWELL

ORWELL'S HOMAGE TO CATALONIA

ORWELL-COLLEY-JURA & MR JONES

ORWELL DOWN & OUT IN PARIS

LENNON & JFK PORTRAYED

BIO OF JACKIE JURA

WHY ORWELL WROTE 1984