''Scintilla'' was a communist circle created in Rome in 1940, as one of a number of attempts to refound the

Communist Party of Italy The Italian Communist Party (, PCI) was a communist and democratic socialist political party in Italy. It was established in Livorno as the Communist Party of Italy (, PCd'I) on 21 January 1921, when it seceded from the Italian Socialist Part ...

(PCd'I) banned since 1926. Most of its leaders would later contribute to creating the dissident-communist

Movimento Comunista d'Italia The ''Movimento Comunista d'Italia'' (MCd'I), best-known after its newspaper ''Bandiera Rossa'', was a revolutionary partisan brigade, and the largest single formation of the 1943-44 Italian Resistance in Rome. History Growing out of communist und ...

, largest formation of the

Italian Resistance The Italian Resistance ( ), or simply ''La'' , consisted of all the Italy, Italian Resistance during World War II, resistance groups who fought the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and the fascist collaborationists of the Italian Social Republic ...

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

. It issued two issues of a newsletter, and brought together a number of former communist and anarchist militants working in post, rail and other sectors. The organisation was smashed by Roman police in December 1942, only to resurface in the liberalisation period following

Pietro Badoglio Pietro Badoglio, 1st Duke of Addis Abeba, 1st Marquess of Sabotino ( , ; 28 September 1871 – 1 November 1956), was an Italian general during both World Wars and the first viceroy of Italian East Africa. With the fall of the Fascist regim ...

's 25 July 1943 coup against

Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who, upon assuming office as Prime Minister of Italy, Prime Minister, became the dictator of Fascist Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 un ...

. Leading members of ''Scintilla'' included Tigrino Sabatini (executed 3 May 1944), a veteran of the PCd’I and ''

Arditi del Popolo The ''Arditi del Popolo'' () was an Italian militant anti-fascist group founded at the end of June 1921 to resist the rise of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party and the violence of the Blackshirts (''squadristi'') paramilitaries.

''; the youthful San Lorenzo carpenter Orfeo Mucci, son of an anarchist bakers’ union leader; the cobbler Ezio Lombardi (executed 24 March 1944), a 1920s organiser of the Rome PCd’I who had been expelled from a ''confino'' organisation on ‘security grounds’ in 1930; the septuagenarian lawyer Raffaele de Luca, a former anarchist who served as Socialist mayor of

Paola Paola is a female given name, the Italian form of the name Paula. In Greek it is Polina. Notable people with the name include: People In arts and entertainment * Paola Del Medico (born 1950), Swiss singer *Paola e Chiara, pop music duo consist ...

in 1921 before joining the PCd’I; the postman Ernesto Sansone (who died at a German prison camp after his November 1943 deportation); the Christian-socialist graphic designer Francesco Cretara, who was later co-editor of ''Bandiera Rossa''; the florist Agostino Raponi, a veteran Communist from the Abruzzo region who joined Togliatti's PCI in prison after his December 1942 arrest; the Socialist statistician Pietro Bàttara; the grenadier captain Aladino Govoni (executed 24 March 1944

whose father was a futurist poet; and Socialist journalist Ezio Villani. Scintilla's only female member, Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti, Anna-Maria Enriques (executed 12 June 1944 in Florence) was a Christian-socialist sacked from her job at the Tuscan capital's state archives in 1938 because her father was Jewish.

References

{{Reflist Italian resistance movement Anti-fascist organisations in Italy Communist organisations in Italy