Ilio Barontini

Ilio Barontini (28 September 1890 – 22 January 1951) was an Italian Communist politician and guerrilla fighter. He notably fought in the Spanish Civil War and in the Italian resistance.

Biography Ilio Barontini was born on 28 September 1890 into a peasant family in Cecina, in the province of Livorno in Tuscany. He joined the Italian Socialist Party at a young age and was a metalworker, first at Breda in Milan and then for the Italian state railways in Livorno. In January 1921 he joined the newly-formed Communist Party of Italy and was the first secretary of the Livorno chapter of the party, as well as a local union leader.

After Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy Barontini lost his job due to his anti-fascist convictions and faced political persecution. In July 1928 he was on trial before the Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State for distribution of subversive propaganda, but was acquitted.

In 1931 he went in exile in France, and two years later moved to the Soviet Union, where he worked as a technician and attended classes at the International Lenin School, During this period he travelled to China to receive guerrilla training with Mao Zedong's Red Army.

After the German invasion he was interned in Le Vernet until the Soviet government, which was still cooperating with the Axis at the time, claimed him as his citizen and requested his release. which he organized among Italian emigrants, and the GAP and the Garibaldi Brigades (of which he was regional commander in Emilia-Romagna) in Italy.

After World War II he became a member of the Central Committee of the now-renamed Italian Communist Party (PCI). He sat in the National Council, a provisional legislative body created in the months immediately following the end of the war. In 1946 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and in 1948 to the first Senate of the Italian Republic. As a Senator he was secretary of the body's Defense Committee.

He died on 22 January 1951 in a road accident in Scandicci near Florence, while returning from a party meeting.