On the 21st of August, 1933 Goliardo Fiaschi was born in Carrara, #Italy. A quarry labourer, he joined the resistance aged 13. After WW2 he joined the #Spanish resistance, suffering two decades in prison for his role in the #AntiFascist struggle.

#onthisday #anarchism

The first thing about Goliardo Fiaschi is that he comes from Carrara. Nestled in the mountains in Nth Italy, a town is world renowned for its marble. The people who inhabit it are reportedly the descendants of Phonecian slaves. The other reason the city is famous is anarchism.

Italian anarchism made a base for itself amongst the quarry workers of Carrara. During WW2 the anarchists managed to drive the occupying Nazi soldiers from the city twice before Allied forces arrived. The anarchist Galileo Palla once remarked, “even the stones are anarchists.”

As for Fiaschi himself, at the age of 8 he entered the quarries to work as a labourer and stone mason. In 1943, already an anarchist, he created a fake birth certificate - to make himself appear older than 13, and joined the partisan resistance.

Originally he smuggled food up to 150 miles across the country to other partisan groups, lugging around a rifle as tall as himself for protection. In 1945 he entered Modena as standard-bearer for the Costrignano Brigade during liberation in April 1945.

Following the liberation, he returned to Carrara and returned to work in the quarries. In the 1950s he befriended Jose Lluis Facerias, a veteran Spanish anarchist of the Ascaso column in the Spanish civil war. The pair would go to Spain in 54 to fight Franco.

They rode across the Pyrenees on bikes and met with the anarchist underground in Barcelona. Tragically, they were betrayed within a fortnight. The Italian was captured, but his Spaniard companion was murdered.

Fiaschi was tortured and jailed, eventually receiving a sentence for 20 years. In gaol he painted postcards to keep busy. Supposedly, he sent thousands to friends and comrades around the world. By all accounts, he became an incredible artist with an eye for detail and realism.

In 1966 he was released under an amnesty, but on his return to Italy he was arrested under a false charge of robbery, supposedly he had robbed a bank in Monferrato when he was already in Spain! He served another 17 years in Italy, finally released after an international campaign.

Fiaschi became a key figure in the Carrarense anarchist movement. He ran a bookshop and cultural circle, and was a prime mover in the occupation of the Germinal Centre located, embarrassingly for the city fathers, in the most prestigious building in Carrara’s main square.

Every year Fiaschi was one of the key organisers of the cities May Day demonstrations. In 1999, he announced to the assembly that he was terminally ill with cancer.

Originally he planned for euthanasia, but instead decided he would live on and let his body be used for study by scientists in anti-cancer research, stating “since my death is inevitable anyway, I will try to be equal to the task.”

During his funeral in the picturesque town of anarchist stone masons, his coffin was borne on the shoulders of friends, followed by a band, and anarchists from all over Italy carrying red and black flags.

His remains were laid to rest beside those of Gino Lucetti and Steffano Vatteroni, both would-be assassins of Mussolini. To this day Carrara has a monument to the anarchist partisans of the Second World War, where you will still find the red and black flag flying.

You can read more on anarchist involvement in the Italian partisan resistance here: https://libcom.org/history/red-years-black-years-anarchist-resistance-fascism-italy

This is the photo of Fiaschi aged around 15, entering liberated Modena in 1945.

***note: we realised that the dates don't quite add up. It's likely he was born in 1930, inconsistencies are probably due to his forging his birth certificate.