Crítica
- IT IS NOT CHANCE:
- FRENCH AUTHORITIES TODAY ARRESTED COLONEL RICCIOTTI GARIBALDI IN NICE
- THE FASCISTS DO NOT COME OFF BEST
Crítica's front page of 4 November 1926 set anger at a disaster at home beside political turmoil in Europe. An editorial headed "No es azar" blamed the Ferrocarril Central Argentino for the previous day's railway catastrophe. It called the disaster the result of negligence and irresponsibility, said the paper had predicted it after earlier accidents, and rejected in advance the company's likely excuses of staff error and unforeseen circumstances. A cable from Nice reported that French police had arrested Colonel Ricciotti Garibaldi over the recent Catalan plot and the attack on Mussolini. A short Italian report described a shootout at Vada, where a Fascist attempt to invade an opposition member's home left one Fascist dead and four wounded.
Translation
IT IS NOT CHANCE:
Nevertheless, the pathetic case of the Ferrocarril Central Argentino now goes beyond the ordinary limits. It is a plain case of negligence and an absolute lack of responsibility. Yesterday's terrible catastrophe, which unfortunately bears out the predictions we made on the occasion of the earlier accidents, has nothing of chance about it. The Central Argentino cannot explain it by issuing simplistic pretexts: inexperience of the staff, regrettable mistakes, unforeseen circumstances, failures, details.
FRENCH AUTHORITIES TODAY ARRESTED COLONEL RICCIOTTI GARIBALDI IN NICE
NICE, 4. — As a consequence of the recent Catalan plot, and also because of the attack on Mussolini, the federal police arrested Colonel Ricciotti Garibaldi, an eminent Italian citizen residing in this city.
THE FASCISTS DO NOT COME OFF BEST
…invade the home of a member of the opposition, located in the town of Vada. On that account a fierce exchange of gunfire broke out, leaving one fascist dead and four wounded. Of the latter, two are in serious condition.
Context
Garibaldi's arrest and Mussolini's informer
Crítica's Nice cable gave two reasons for Colonel Ricciotti Garibaldi's arrest, the Catalan plot and the attack on Mussolini, and presented him simply as an eminent Italian citizen. Later historical accounts tell a different story. Garibaldi, a grandson of the hero of Italian unification, was one of the Italian exiles whom Francesc Macià recruited to give his Catalan volunteers military experience. Historians describe him as no real anti-Fascist fighter but a double agent serving Mussolini's political police. The Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana states that, as a secret agent of Mussolini's government, he denounced the conspiracy to the French police, and another account attributes the French police's advance knowledge to an apparent leak from Garibaldi's group. Even so, Garibaldi was one of the two Italians who stood trial alongside Macià and the Catalan leaders. So the arrest the paper reported as part of a crackdown on an Italian exile also caught the man who had informed on the plot.
The Catalan plot of Prats de Molló
The "recent Catalan plot" in the cable was the attempted invasion of Catalonia from France planned by Francesc Macià and the leadership of Estat Català. Two columns were to cross the border, occupy Olot and proclaim a Catalan Republic. The French police, who had been forewarned, arrested most of the participants near the frontier, and Macià himself was arrested on 4 November in the country house he was occupying near Prats de Molló. Crítica reported Garibaldi's arrest in Nice under the same date. The ringleaders were later tried in Paris, but according to the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana their penalties were reduced to expulsion and fines. When Crítica went to press, the affair was still unfolding: the same page announced Macià's arrest that day in its banner headline.
Which attack on Mussolini the cable meant
The cable cited "the attack on Mussolini" as a second reason for the arrest without saying which one. The most recent attempt had taken place in Bologna on 31 October 1926, only four days before the dispatch: a shot was fired at Mussolini as he rode through the city in an open car, and a 15-year-old boy, Anteo Zamboni, was lynched. That attempt led to laws creating Mussolini's secret police. In the autumn of 1926, then, an assassination attempt in Italy was being linked to Italian exiles abroad, and French police action on the Riviera was reported in that setting.
Fascist squad raids on opposition homes
The Vada report describes Fascists trying to invade the home of an opposition member, a raid that ended in a gunfight in which, the paper says, one Fascist was killed and four wounded. Raids of this kind came out of squadrismo, the movement of Fascist action squads that systematically used violence to eliminate parties opposed to Fascism. In 1926 Mussolini issued the Consolidated Public Safety Act, which delegitimised squad violence. The headline stressed that this time the attackers had suffered the losses.
Original
NO ES AZAR:
Sin embargo, el caso patético del Ferrocarril Central Argentino, pasa ya de los límites comunes. Es un caso patente de desidia y falta absoluta de responsabilidad. La terrible catástrofe de ayer, que, desgraciadamente, cumple nuestras predicciones formuladas en ocasión de los accidentes anteriores, no tiene nada de azaroso. El Central Argentino no puede explicarlo, expidiéndose con argucias simplistas: impericia del personal, equivocaciones lamentables, circunstancias imprevistas, fallas, detalles.
LAS AUTORIDADES FRANCESAS DETUVIERON HOY EN NIZA AL CORONEL RICCIOTTI GARIBALDI
NIZA, 4. - Como consecuencia del reciente complot catalán y también por el atentado contra Mussolini, la policía federal arrestó al coronel Ricciotti Garibaldi, eminente ciudadano italiano, radicado en ésta.
LOS FASCISTAS NO SACAN LA MEJOR PARTE
invadir el domicilio de un miembro de la oposición, situada en el pueblo de Vada. Con tal motivo se produjo un recio tiroteo, resultando un fascista muerto y cuatro heridos. De estos últimos, dos se encuentran en grave estado.
Source: Source: Internet Archive / Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina