The news that Spain had broken out in revolt against the "coup" by Franco was like the explosion of a bomb, in the anti-fascist Italian emigration environments in Paris. The exiles, forced to fight for years on the defensive, saw immediately that in the land of Spain is finally dared to say no to fascism clearly, and were holding the weapons to prevent its triumph.
While some companions left immediately to go and fight in Barcelona, many others were preparing to leave and met frequently to decide what to do. At a specially convened meeting of all political forces in anti-fascist Italian in Paris, Longo for the Communists and the Socialists Buozzi to declare that their parties were ready to send medical aid and to give moral support to the Spanish people, but they were against an agreement for an armed intervention. The representative of Republicans remained on the general, without any commitment, to the anarchists and the "giellisti" (militant movement of Justice and Liberty) were the only ones who support the need for an immediate departure for Spain. And so they did.
On August 18, 1936, in fact, less than a month after the popular uprising (July 19), a first group of Italian anti-fascists left for the Aragon front, enrolled voluntarily in the Italian section of the Ascaso column, organized and trained by militant anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists of the CNT and the FAI. Most of these early volunteers were Italian anarchists (one hundred).
Other Italian anarchists who came to Spain after, joined the Durruti Column (CNT-FAI), the column Tierra y Libertad (CNT-FAI), the column Ortiz (CNT-FAI) and other formations. According to an estimate by the documented records of enlistment of the Italian section, filed with the CNT-FAI, the Italian anarchists in Spain were six hundred fifty-three fighters.
In the first few months of the beginning of the revolution many fellow Italians were dragged by a revolutionary enthusiasm that brought them always in the front row most of them in this period died and were injured. Many wounded comrades returned to the front to fight again. This, for example, is the companion case of Pio Turroni, which, hurt the first time in October, after a few months returned to the front, where he was wounded again, then went back to Barcelona, where he was political commissar for the Italians, in the Spartacus barracks.
Italian anarchists always maintained a consistent position, especially in front of the counter-communist, as in the days of May '37 in Barcelona. It is no coincidence that in those days the Stalinists murdered Italian anarchists Camillo Berneri (in Barcelona, which drew up the magazine in Italian " Guerra di classe") and Francesco Barbieri.
Even before the process of militarization of their revolutionary intransigent position was expressed in a nearly unanimous way. Already on October 10, and then before November 13 drafted two documents, respectively, in which he denounced the danger of counter-involution, if it were passed, as eventually passed, the process of militarization (signed documents to the Italian section of the Ascaso column, by Rabitti, Mioli, Buleghin, Petacchi, Puntoni, Serra, Segata). Although during the tragic days of the communist counter-revolution they disagreed with the "leadership" of the FAI and the CNT and despite having now realized that the fate of the revolution turn for the worse, they continued to fight and die.
There are approximately sixty Italian anarchists in Spain killed and one hundred and fifty wounded, many of whom later died because of the hardships endured in concentration camps in France.
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