Guido Picelli

Guido Picelli (9 October 1889 – 5 January 1937) was an Italian anti-fascist, politician and soldier. He was a founding member of the Arditi del Popolo and a participant in the Spanish Civil War where he died in battle.

Biography

Early life Born in to a working-class, Picelli worked as a watchmaker and later an actor. He participated in the First World War and obtained the rank of second lieutenant there as well as the Bronze Medal of Military Valor and the bronze medal of the Italian Red Cross.

Back in Parma, in 1919 he joined the Italian Socialist Party and founded the local section of the Proletarian League of Veterans. In 1920, he was imprisoned for having tried to prevent the departure of a train of grenadiers towards Albania. In 1921 he was elected deputy to parliament with the Italian Socialist Party.

Anti-fascist leader of Italy Picelli was a founding member of the Red Guards in 1920 to defend striking workers against fascist strikebreakers. After the failure of the Red Guards, Picelli became a founder of the Arditi del Popolo, despite the opposition of the Italian Socialist Party.

On July 31, 1922, a legal strike was proclaimed throughout Italy by the Alleanza del Lavoro. In the city of Parma Picelli, together with his brother Vittorio led a united anti-fascist front consisting of communists, anarchists, socialists and republicans. Italo Balbo, a leading member of the National Fascist Party was sent to suppress the strike but his Squadristi were repulsed. Eventually martial law was declared in the city of Parma and the strike was suppressed by the military.

In November 1926, following the promulgation of the Fascist laws, Picelli and the other Aventinian deputies were declared forfeited from their parliamentary mandate. Picelli was arrested and sentenced to five years of confinement which he served in Lampedusa and Lipari.

On November 9, 1931, he was freed and from Rome, he moved to Milan with an authorization from the head of the police Arturo Bocchini, where he married his partner Paolina Rocchetti. From Milan Picelli expatriated to France.

Picelli became a critic of the political purges within among whose victims were Italian communists, including Dante Corneli, his emigration companion who was accused of Trotskyism.

Eventually becoming a suspect himself, in March 1935 he was first fired from school, losing both the vouchers to buy food and the salary to pay the rent and finally he was sent to a factory.

Spanish Civil War and death July 1936 the Spanish Civil War broke out and Picelli requested to be allowed to leave the Soviet Union, to fight Francoist forces.

After a permit denied in September 1936, he later managed to get permission to leave the Soviet Union for Spain, but it was specified that he would not represent the Comintern in any way.

In Albacete, Picelli trained the volunteers of his column for the Madrid front. On December 13, 1936, following the agreement signed in Paris for the formation of a single Italian anti-fascist legion under the political patronage of the socialist, communist and republican parties and with the help of the organizations adhering to the Italian committee for Spain, the Colonna Picelli it was incorporated into the Garibaldi Brigade.

The Spanish Republican government held a state funeral for him in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia.