Pio Turroni

Pio Turroni (30 May 1906 – 7 April 1982) was an Italian anarchist and editor of anarchist publications. He fought for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the Confederal militias. He was the fourth recorded son of Giuseppe Turroni by his marriage with Virginia Magnani. The family was highly politicized. His brother, Mauro (born 1891) was a socialist while Luigi Egisto (born 1893) and Urbano (known as Adolfo and born 1900) were committed republicans.

Between two world wars In 1920 Turroni took part in an Errico Malatesta rally in Cesena. Details are sparse, but it is thought he remained in Belgium for approximately two years, working in the construction sector and continuing to pursue his political agenda of social activism.

He then moved to France, arriving in Paris probably towards the end of 1926. A Fascist government under Benito Mussolini had been appointed in Italy in 1922, and by 1926 Paris was becoming a focus for Italian political exiles: in Paris Turroni participated actively in Italian antifascist activism. Unable to find work in the French capital, he moved to Normandy in the west, but at the end of 1928 he was able to return to Paris. It was while campaigning to prevent the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti that Turroni first met the Ukrainian anarchist, Nestor Makhno (1888–1934). by Camillo Berneri.

In March 1933 Pio Turroni's name was placed on a list of wanted men in connection with a detention order issued by the prefecture in Forlì back home in Italy, and it may be partly for this reason that his precise whereabouts within becomes increasingly hard to track in the sources, but there are records of his presence in towns and cities including Brest, Bordeaux, Marseille and Vichy. Between 1932 and November 1935 he was informally married to Nara Cremonini, daughter of another anarchist exile, Bernardo Cremonini. Although Cremonini was treated as an exiled anarchist and an opponent of fascism, it later transpired that since 1927 he had worked as an agent provocateur and spy on behalf of the Italian fascist secret police, and Turroni would later hold Cremonini culpable for the extent to which the Italian authorities often seemed disconcertingly well briefed about his activities and whereabouts. In March 1937 he was badly wounded in fighting at Belchite. Shortly after this he was one of those, together with Attilio Bulzamini, who came up with a plan for an attempt on the life of Mussolini during the first week in August, while the dictator was in holiday with his family in Riccione. Turreni moved from Barcelona to Marseille to wait for the necessary "materials", Details remain unclear, but Mussolini was not assassinated and Turroni returned to France. The Italian authorities evidently knew more about Turroni's movements than he anticipated, and on 3 September 1939 he was arrested in Marseille at the request of the Italian government and placed in the military prison of Fort Saint-Nicolas by the entrance to the Old Port of Marseille. According to official reports he was accused of espionage on behalf of a foreign power It was only after they had been interned with "real" Italian fascists, and become involved in endless politically driven skirmishes with these, that the English authorities determined that Turroni was a "genuine" antifascist. and Armido Abbate, he established the Alliance of Libertarian Groups and Revolutionary Libertarians (Alleanza dei Gruppi Libertari e Rivoluzione libertaria). He became editor of Volontà, an anarchist newspaper.

After a second world war After the war ended, in 1950 Turroni became the editor of L'Aurora in Forlì, back in his home region. With Gigi Damiani he founded the fortnightly L'Antistato, also based in Forlì, and to which the two of them were the principal contributors, working closely together for several years. In 1951 his journalistic work led him into court when he was accused of "insulting the judiciary" ("vilipendio alla magistratura"). Further trials followed, including one in Bologna in 1959 in which he was charged with producing "anti-electoral propaganda" ("propaganda antielettorale"). (In Genoa Aurelio Chessa faced similar charges at this time. )

Turroni was a delegate at the founding postwar conference of the Italian Anarchist Federation at Carrara in 1945. However, he became critical of several aspects of the federation and at the ninth conference, again at Carrara, in 1965 he was one of those "individualist" anarchists who broke away, forming the "Anarchist Initiative Groups" (Gruppi di iniziativa anarchica / GIA).