The revolution begins now

That was the second attempt. The first one had failed in May 1937, but Pio had not given up on doing the Duce in. There was no time to waste. He and Domenico would be carrying out the attack: they both knew their way around.

Pio Turroni (1906-1982) worked as a bricklayer all his life. He is a straightforward man, an autodidact, but his story is by no means straightforward. Filed as a subversive at the age of sixteen, he soon becomes one of the most prominent (and closely monitored) Italian anarchists, and an intimate friend of internationally known militants such as the Ukrainian Nestor Machno, by then an exile in France, or the Italian Camillo Berneri, of whom he is the closest collaborator when Stalinist gunmen kill him in Barcelona in 1937. He fights, and not in a metaphorical sense, Nazifascism, Francoism and Stalinism, although it is the democracies that repeatedly send him to jail. He collaborates with Garosci, Lussu, Valiani and many other anti-fascist exiles, together with whom he fortunately escapes from Marseilles at the outbreak of World War II. And three times he attempted – with other Italian and Spanish anarchists – to put Mussolini down. To no avail, but without ceasing for a moment to fight fascism wherever it may be found. A man of action and not one of letters, he nevertheless founded newspapers and publishing houses. This was Pio Turroni, calloused hands, anarchist passion.

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