Aureliano Santini

Aureliano Santini (12 February 1911 – 19 January 1966) was an Italian communist politician and partisan. He served as president of the Province of Arezzo from 1953 to 1964 and was a leading figure of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in Tuscany.

Life and career Santini was born in Fontanella, a village near Empoli, in 1911. In 1931 he was arrested by the Fascist regime for communist activity and sentenced to one year in prison. After his release in 1932, he went into exile abroad, living in Corsica, France, and the Soviet Union, where he attended a Leninist school in Moscow. He also fought in the Spanish Civil War as an officer in the Garibaldi Brigades, during which he was wounded in 1937.

During World War II he was interned by French authorities in Algeria and later imprisoned in Italy for draft evasion and political activity. After the fall of Fascism, he joined the Italian Resistance in Empoli and became involved in the local National Liberation Committee (CLN), taking on administrative responsibilities after the liberation.