Canevascini and the antifascists
Lugano, Lodrino, Zurich
Key figures: Guglielmo Canevascini, Randolfo Pacciardi, Giovanni Bassanesi, Carlo Rosselli
HLS (German): Guglielmo Canevascini, Antifascism
Guglielmo Canevascini. Born in Tenero in 1886, the son of farmers, Canevascini emigrates as a young man to French-speaking Switzerland and France and in 1904 joins the Ticino socialist party. In 1913 he founds Libera Stampa, which the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland calls the first antifascist daily in Italian in Europe, banned in Italy from 1923. He leads the Lugano general strike of 1918 and in 1922 becomes the first socialist elected to the Ticino government, where he remains until 1959, the author of important social laws. People called him “il Padreterno”, the Almighty.
The exiles. After the March on Rome (1922) and the “ultra-fascist” laws (1926) many opponents, the fuorusciti, seek refuge in Switzerland. The Confederation receives them warily: in 1926 Giuseppe Motta asks them to keep out of politics and not to settle in the border cantons. Exiles such as the former deputy Angelo Tonello and the republican Randolfo Pacciardi, linked to Giustizia e Libertà, write for Libera Stampa. The Ticino socialists supply Swiss passports to antifascists: some are found on activists arrested in Italy, among them the future President of the Republic Sandro Pertini. In Zurich the writer Ignazio Silone, a refugee since 1930, publishes his novels with the socialist publisher Emil Oprecht.
The flight over Milan (July 1930). On 11 July 1930 the aviator Giovanni Bassanesi takes off from Lodrino in Ticino and flies over Milan dropping thousands of Giustizia e Libertà leaflets against the regime; on the way back he crashes in the Gotthard massif and survives. The operation, organised by Carlo Rosselli and Alberto Tarchiani, starts with Canevascini’s discreet support. At the trial before the Federal Criminal Court in Lugano Bassanesi is sentenced to four months; the Federal Council expels him, Rosselli and Tarchiani. In the National Council the head of the Justice Department, Heinrich Häberlin, declares: “We are neither fascists nor antifascists, we are Swiss.”
Resistance during the war (1939–1945). During the Second World War Canevascini organises antifascist action in Ticino with the legal means of his office, but also with secret structures such as the action squads of the “Liberi e Svizzeri”. He is among the promoters of Radio Monte Ceneri, a free voice in Italian, and sets up the Lugano section of Swiss Workers’ Relief to help refugees. In 1936, without his knowledge, his son Elio had left as a volunteer to fight against Franco in Spain.
Libera Stampa, the Lugano socialist daily founded by Canevascini, 23 October 1943: on the front page the article “The antisemitic persecution in Italy”
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Giovanni Bassanesi, the aviator who flew over Milan from Ticino on 11 July 1930, 1930
Amici di Giovanni Bassanesi, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
The 220-metre antenna of the Monte Ceneri transmitter, from which Radio Monte Ceneri broadcast, 2010
Photo MasterFFF, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Giulio Barni, a revolutionary syndicalist exiled in Ticino who influenced Canevascini’s political education, in a drawing from about 1910
Wikimedia Commons, public domain