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Title: Goliardo Fiaschi Author: Antonio TĂ©llez SolĂ Date: October 2000 Language: en Topics: biography Source: Retrieved on 17th May 2021 from https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/c2frm0 Notes: Published in KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 24, October 2000. Translated by Paul Sharkey.
Goliardo Fiaschi was born in Carrara (Italy) on 21 August 1930 and died
in the same city on 29 July 2000. On 9 September 1943, aged thirteen, he
joined the Resistance in his district, but in order to gain admittance
he claimed to be over fifteen years old. By the time that Goliardo was
starting out in life as an antifascist fighter, the Allied forces had
just overrun Sicily where they had landed in July. Benito Mussolini had
been placed under arrest by order of the king and a government headed by
Marshal Badoglio had capitulated on 8 September, the very day on which
the Allies landed on the peninsula at Salerno.
Carrara’s antifascists entrusted Goliardo with the task of collecting
the weaponry jettisoned by deserting Italian troops, weaponry that he
removed at great risk to the dumps of the National Liberation Committee
(CLN) and which were the first weapons with which the partisans armed
themselves.
Since Goliardo was, when all is said and done, still no more than a boy,
he could pass unremarked with a handcart, ferrying guns hidden under
wood, rags or the like. He very soon learned how to handle, strip and
reassemble a wide variety of weapons. Which led to his being starting
out with the libertarian “Gino Lucetti” formation which was, with other
organisations, under the control of the CLN (National Liberation
Committee). He served with this up until 31 December 1944.
At that time, food supplies in Carrara were non-existent. People were
desperate, skeletal. There was constant danger on every side — from the
Nazis and fascists and from Allied air-raids. Fiaschi was entrusted with
a number of missions into Marina de Carrara and Avenza. The explosion of
an artillery shell in the latter town left him half-buried. In Bonascola
which also came under fire from the Allies, Fiaschi was a frequent
visitor on his missions (a partisan unit having been set up there under
the command of Alcides, and the distribution of arms to the peasants
having begun there). On one occasion he visited on a horse-drawn cart
that galloped through a fascist checkpoint on the road and was fortunate
not to be stopped.
In late December, Goliardo Fiaschi decided to cross through the German
lines to join the Anglo- American forces which had postponed the
continuat- ion of their push until April. They were faced with the last
German lines of defence that side of the Alps, the Gothic Line, which
crossed Italy diagonally from Pisa in the north and the Tyrrhenian Sea,
weaving its way across the Appennines as far as Rimini in the south on
the Adriatic. It was made up of a chain of fortifications with anti-tank
minefields, lines of barbed wire, gun emplacements and machine-gun nests
dug into the rocks or behind concrete.
Late in December 1944, anyway, Goliardo Fiaschi set off on his risky
journey to join the Allied forces on the Seravezza front north of
Pietrasanta. His distracted mother walked a good part of the way with
him, pleading for him to stay with the family. In Bergiola he met up
with some partisans and together they made it to Antona where they were
joined by a column of civilians also bent on passing through the lines.
With some difficulty they made it to Seravezza but when a roll-call was
taken it was discovered that 14 of their number had vanished: they had
probably perished while walking over icy trails overlooking deep
gullies.
Fiaschi reported to the command post, only to be told that they had no
need of him there, but that people were required elsewhere. They sent
him on to the Abetone front along with the 3^(rd) Costrignano Brigade,
Modena Division (Emilia Region). There he was issued with grenades and a
Sten gun, in the handling of which he was already well versed.
By the time that the Allied offensive resumed in April 1945 with the
attack on Monte Lancio, where the fortifications were attacked in broad
daylight under murderous enemy gunfire, Goliardo was the second person
to reach the summit, after his commanding officer Filippo Papa.
After a short respite they had to cope with a forceful German
counter-attack. They pressed on into Fanano, Sestola, Pavullo and
Sassuolo and finally Modena. Progress was very difficult throughout as
all of the roads had been mined and they were only able to proceed in
single file whilst facing dogged Nazi resistance.
In Modena Goliardo’s unit paraded under a rain of flowers, with Goliardo
leading the way as standard-bearer. At the same time, Italian partisans
were surfacing to ever greater effect behind the German lines. In
Carrara, Genoa, Turin, Milan and elsewhere these guerrilla brigades
forced the Germans into surrender and by the time that the Allies
arrived were already solidly in control of the situation.
The Italian campaign, with its slow, painful, bloody progress through
mountainous areas which seemed to have no end, was drawing to a close.
Worried about the family and comrades that he had left behind him in
Carrara, Goliardo set off for the city on foot, having been frustrated
in his requests for a horse. In the environs of Abetone, after he had
covered 90 kilometres already, an American vehicle picked him up and
took him as far as Bagni di Lucca some 25 kilometres from Abetone. They
dropped him off at the mayor’s house for a few days’ rest. After which a
US officer accompanied him as far as Carrara where he was finally
reunited with his family.
Ugo Mazzucchelli, the commander of the “Gino Lucetti” formation awarded
Goliardo a citation from General Harold Alexander (who had attended the
parade through Modena) recording Goliardo’s part in the resistance in
the marble-quarrying city. In 1956 while acting premises officer for the
“Pietro Gori” anarchist group’s premises in Canal Del Rio street in
Carrara, Goliardo made the acquaintances of the Spanish anti-Francoist
fighters JosĂ© Lluis FacerĂas and Luis AgustĂn Vicente, known in Italy as
“Alberto” and “Mario Mella” respectively. From them he learned of the
tragic plight of the Spanish people under the Franco regime and this
planted the notion in his head of joining the fight against the dictator
Francisco Franco and trying to overthrow it. Towards the end of 1956 he
crossed into France, meaning to meet up with Francisco Sabaté Llopart
(“El Quico”) only to find that the latter had just set off for Spain at
the end of November with some other guerrillas.
At the anarchist jamboree in 1956 which was held in Villa Paradiso in
Marina de Carrara from 1 July to 31 August, Fiaschi almost drowned in an
accident. By the time that he arrived in Toulouse late in November 1956,
he fell ill as a result of this mishap and his comrades took him to a
base in the Pyrenees to recuperate.
In March 1957, JosĂ© Lluis FacerĂas and Luis AgustĂn Vicente arrived back
in France from Italy. José visited Goliardo several times and showed him
cuttings from the Italian press to the effect that the police were
looking for him in connection with his supposed involvement in an armed
hold-up carried out at a branch of the Banco di Casale e del Monferrato
in Villanova on 15 January 1957. FacerĂas told him that upon his return
to Italy he would be able to supply documentary proof that he was in
France at the time of the offence and was, therefore, innocent. But for
the moment what Goliardo wanted to do was join in the fight against
Franco. FacerĂas suggested that he join him on the incursion into Spain
for which he was making preparations and Goliardo agreed.
On 15 August 1957 FacerĂas, Goliardo and Luis AgustĂn set off for Spain;
they reached the border by nightfall. On the 15^(th) it poured with
rain. They entered Spain at 8.40pm. on 17 August. On 28 August FacerĂas
and Goliardo reached Barcelona and took cover in a hut on Tibidabo, the
mountain overlooking Barcelona and connected to it by tram and
cable-car.Luis Vicente had split off in Sant Joan de les Abadesses
(Gerona), meaning to take his chances with travelling on to Barcelona
alone.
This was a bad decision because on 27 August he was arrested in Sabadell
(Barcelona) in the home of a friend — which is to say that he was picked
up before his colleagues reached Tibidabo. At 7.30pm. on 29 August,
FacerĂas made the trip down into Barcelona, telling his friend that he
had a rendezvous to keep “with a comrade” and warning him that he would
be back by midnight at the latest. He also told him that if by any
chance anything befell him, Goliardo should move to a base of which he
gave him the details. Goliardo accompanied him part of the way and while
returning to the hut was arrested by a six-strong police unit laying in
wait in the area.
FacerĂas was killed in Barcelona on 30 August at 10.45 am., so it is
plain that the timing of the rendezvous had been changed, no doubt to
allow time for the laying of the ambush in which he died. His “comrade”
had sold him out.
Fiaschi and Luis Vicente were brought before a Court Martial on 12
August 1958, with the former receiving a prison term of 20 years and one
day and the latter 24 years and four months. Goliardo had served five
months when news reached him of the death of his father, Pietro. He
served a total of seven years, eleven months and fourteen days, emerging
from prison on 14 August 1966, only to be handed over to the Italian
authorities which had sued for his extradition. Goliardo applied for a
review of the sentence passed on him in his absence on 12 April 1960,
but his application was rejected out of hand. He was committed to the
prison at San Giorgio di Luca. In October 1971 he was transferred to the
prison in Lecce and finally to Portolongone where he served 13 months in
the cells for constantly protesting and demanding to be released.
After a lengthy campaign for his release, he was pardoned and discharged
on 30 March 1974. Between Spain and Italy, he had seen the inside of 48
penal establishments. Several hundred anarchists from Italy and
elsewhere attended his funeral, bidding him farewell by waving red and
black flags and singing anarchist anthems.
Goliardo Fiaschi died after completion of his memoirs, having begun the
writing of them some years previously after he was diagnosed with the
disease that carried him to his grave.