The anti-fascist exile in Ticino

Libera Stampa and the first exiles

The tradition of political asylum that Chapter C.II describes for the Risorgimento revived after 1922. The Historical Dictionary records that after the Fascist seizure of power numerous Italian anti-fascists fled to Switzerland.¹ Ticino was their natural first refuge, since it shared their language, lay within reach of Milan and possessed a socialist and radical milieu that sympathized with them. The centre of this milieu was the daily Libera Stampa, founded in 1913 by Guglielmo Canevascini. Mauro Cerutti calls it the first anti-fascist daily newspaper in the Italian language to appear in Europe.² Its editorial office in Lugano became a meeting point for exiles, a source of information for the anti-fascist press abroad and a target of the Italian political police.

The first prominent exile to write for the paper was Angelo Tonello, a former socialist deputy in the Italian parliament. He published anti-fascist articles in Libera Stampa until the Federal Council warned him in 1925 to refrain from political activity.³ The warning illustrates the legal position of the exiles. Swiss asylum practice tolerated foreign refugees on condition that they did not engage in political activity that could compromise Switzerland's relations with their home state. The federal authorities could expel a foreigner who endangered the internal or external security of the country under Article 70 of the Federal Constitution of 1874.⁴ Every article, meeting and journey of an exile was therefore a calculation of risk, both for the exile and for those who sheltered him.

Pacciardi's centre in Lugano, 1927–1933

Tonello's place was taken by Randolfo Pacciardi, a journalist and militant of the Italian Republican Party, born in the province of Grosseto in 1899, who had gone into exile in Switzerland in 1926. Pacciardi worked actively with Giustizia e Libertà, the movement founded in France in 1929 by Carlo Rosselli and other exiles.⁵ From Lugano he ran what a recent study calls the "anti-fascist centre of Pacciardi in Lugano (1927–1933)", with adventurous comings and goings across the Italian–Swiss border and clandestine operations against the regime that included plots against Mussolini.⁶ The Italian police followed these activities closely. Cerutti's study of the Swiss–Italian relations of the Fascist period devotes a chapter to the Italian police and the anti-fascist emigrants, with the role of informers in Switzerland and of the chief of police Arturo Bocchini.⁷

The Italian State did not limit itself to surveillance. In 1928 Cesare Rossi, a former close collaborator of Mussolini who had broken with him after the murder of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, was arrested by the Italian police near Campione.⁸ Campione d'Italia, an Italian enclave on the eastern shore of Lake Lugano surrounded by Swiss territory, was Italian soil within sight of Lugano. Rossi, who lived in exile in France, had been lured to a meeting near the Swiss border by his friend Filippo Filippelli, former director of the Corriere italiano, who had passed one of Rossi's letters to the police. At the meeting place the Fascist police seized him and took him by force onto Italian territory.⁹ The episode showed that the border offered protection only to those who stayed on its Swiss side. It also explains the nervousness of the Swiss authorities, who feared both Italian violations of Swiss sovereignty and the use of Swiss territory for attacks on Italy.

Notes

1. Walter Kälin, "Asyl", in HLS, version of 26 November 2002, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/010374/: "Nach 1922 flohen zahlreiche italienische Antifaschisten in die Schweiz." ↩
2. Mauro Cerutti, "Antifaschismus", in HLS, version of 27 June 2016, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/027835/2016-06-27/: "die erste antifaschistische Tageszeitung in italienischer Sprache, die in Europa erschien". ↩
3. Cerutti, "Antifaschismus" (above). ↩
4. Kälin, "Asyl" (above), on Article 57 of the Federal Constitution of 1848 and Article 70 of the Federal Constitution of 1874, which gave the Confederation the right to expel "Fremde, welche die innere und äussere Sicherheit der Eidgenossenschaft gefährden". ↩
5. Cerutti, "Antifaschismus" (above); Treccani, Enciclopedia on line, "Pacciardi, Randolfo", https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/randolfo-pacciardi/: "Uomo politico (Giuncarico, Grosseto, 1899 - Roma 1991). Giornalista, militante nel Partito repubblicano"; "Esule in Svizzera (1926), ne fu poi espulso (1933)". ↩
6. Una bomba per il duce. La centrale antifascista di Pacciardi a Lugano (1927–1933), ISBN 978-88-498-0706-6, publisher's description reproduced at https://prestatest.bazzacco.net/libri/460447-bomba-per-il-duce-la-centrale-antifascista-di-pacciardi-a-lugano-1927-1933-una--9788849807066.html ("avventurosi andirivieni sulla frontiera italo-svizzera"). The author and publisher were not shown on the page consulted. ↩
7. Cerutti, Fra Roma e Berna (above), table of contents, chapter 6 ("La polizia italiana e gli emigrati antifascisti"). ↩
8. Cerutti, "L'Italia fascista e la Svizzera" (above). ↩
9. Mauro Canali, "Rossi, Cesare", in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 88 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2017), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/cesare-rossi_(Dizionario-Biografico)/: Filippelli "consegnò la lettera alla polizia e nell'agosto 1928 lo convinse a incontrarlo in una località prossima al confine svizzero dove la polizia fascista lo catturò per portarlo a forza in territorio italiano". ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.