L’Écho d’Alger
- French Police Uncover a Vast Plot Against the Spanish Government
- After the Attempt on Mr. Mussolini
- The Great Long-Distance Flights
This front page of L'Écho d'Alger, carrying dispatches dated 3 November 1926, led with a Paris report that French police had broken up a large conspiracy by what it called Spanish revolutionaries and anarchists, who had set up headquarters and stockpiled arms in France to overthrow Primo de Rivera and the Spanish monarchy; the principal militants were said to have been seized as they crossed the border. A Rome dispatch added grim detail on the Bologna attack on Mussolini: the alleged shooter Zamboni was shot down by a carabiniere, then stabbed and strangled by fascists in the crowd, while police had made two thousand preventive arrests and searched houses along the route before the Duce's visit. A short aviation item reported Noguès leaving Saint-Raphaël for the Persian Gulf and putting in at Ajaccio because of bad weather.
Translation
French Police Uncover a Vast Plot Against the Spanish Government
Paris, November 3. — A vast plot by Spanish revolutionaries, who aimed to stir up a genuine revolution in Spain against the government of General Primo de Rivera and against the monarchy, has just been uncovered by our police. It was indeed in France that a powerful and extremely well-organized association of these anarchists had set up its headquarters, gathered weapons and prepared the details of the operation. Alerted by the French authorities, the Spanish police have not yet had to intervene, for the First Mobile Brigade was able to arrest the principal militants and their auxiliaries just as they were crossing the border.
After the Attempt on Mr. Mussolini
Rome, November 3. — Word comes from Bologna that the carabiniere who deflected the bullet fired by Zamboni shot him down with his revolver. Fascists in the crowd finished him off with daggers, strangled him, and would have hanged the body from a lamppost had the police not intervened. Before the Duce's arrival in Bologna, the police had taken extraordinary precautions. It is confirmed that two thousand preventive arrests had been made; houses with windows overlooking the streets along which the official procession would pass had been searched; the owners had been notified that they were forbidden to receive outsiders, even their relatives.
The Great Long-Distance Flights
Paris, November 3. — Le Petit Parisien reports from Nice: The aviator Noguès took off this morning from Saint-Raphaël on a long-distance flight toward the Persian Gulf. His departure was preceded by that of three Goliaths, which headed for Bizerte. Because of bad weather, he had to put in at Ajaccio.
Context
The Catalan separatists behind the 'Spanish plot'
The paper describes a powerful association of 'Spanish revolutionaries' and 'anarchists' headquartered in France, but the conspiracy it refers to was a planned invasion of Catalonia from French territory, organized by Francesc Macià and the leadership of the separatist party Estat Català to achieve Catalan independence. Macià's plan was for armed squads, the escamots, to enter through Prats de Molló in French Catalonia, take Olot and then move on Barcelona. The weapons the paper mentions had been gathered over a long period: between April and August 1925 members of the escamots set up several arms depots near the Franco-Spanish border. On 30 October 1926 Macià gave the mobilization order, and volunteers were to leave Paris and other French cities disguised as hikers. The paper's labels thus recast a Catalan nationalist enterprise aimed at independence as a generic Spanish revolutionary or anarchist plot against the dictatorship and the monarchy.
How the Prats de Molló plot was exposed and prosecuted
The paper credits the French First Mobile Brigade with arresting the leaders at the border before the Spanish police needed to act. Later accounts explain why the authorities were ready: the invasion failed because the French police had been warned, apparently through a leak from the group of Italian exiles around Ricciotti Garibaldi Jr, who was not an anti-fascist fighter at all but a double agent working for Mussolini's political police. The roundup near the border produced 111 detainees, and Macià himself was arrested on 4 November in the country house he was occupying, a day after the date of the Paris dispatch. The affair then moved to a Paris courtroom, where the trial opened on 21 January 1927 and Macià read a long statement on behalf of all the accused defending the Catalan cause.
The Bologna attack of 31 October 1926 and its aftermath
On 31 October 1926 a shot was fired at Mussolini as he rode in an open car through Bologna, and it led to the lynching of a 15-year-old boy, Anteo Zamboni. The Rome dispatch treats Zamboni's guilt and the carabiniere's deflection of the bullet as settled facts, whereas the terrorism scholar J. Bowyer Bell judged the boy probably innocent and the affair either a put-up job or a plot among Fascists. Mimmo Franzinelli's recent history, as reviewed in ItaliaOggi, describes the boy as stabbed, strangled, kicked, punched and bitten, which matches the dispatch's account of daggers and strangling. The Bologna shooting came after Violet Gibson's shot in April and Gino Lucetti's bomb in September of the same year. It led to the laws creating Mussolini's secret police, and according to the same review the attacks were used to outlaw the independent press and dissolve the parties and Freemasonry. The figure of two thousand preventive arrests rests on the paper's own report.
Maurice Noguès and the eastward air routes
Maurice Noguès, whose departure the paper records, was an experienced pilot engaged in opening air links toward the East. In 1926 he joined the Compagnie des Messageries Transaériennes, later part of Air Orient, initiating flights to Syria and then Lebanon, and Lebanon later issued a stamp marking the tenth anniversary of the first Marseille–Beirut flight, which he had made. A flight from Saint-Raphaël toward the Persian Gulf, with a weather stop at Ajaccio, points in the same direction as this effort to extend French air routes across the Mediterranean and the Levant. The paper reports only the start of the flight and the stop, not its outcome. Noguès later became chief pilot of Air Orient and in 1931 extended the Syrian route to Saigon.
Guilbaud's 1926 seaplane raid toward Madagascar
The paper's heading 'Les grands raids aériens' fits an autumn in which several French long-distance flights were under way at once. On 12 October 1926 the long-range CAMS 37GR flying boat, flown by Lieutenant de Vaisseau Guilbaud, set out, accompanied by a Lioré-Olivier LeO H-194, on a proving flight to Madagascar. On 3 January 1927 an engine threw a connecting rod, and Guilbaud abandoned the Madagascar flight and returned to Marseille on 9 March 1927. Another passage of the same reference work says he ventured as far as Madagascar before returning, so accounts of the flight's furthest point disagree. Like Noguès's eastward raid, Guilbaud's flight tested long routes reaching out from metropolitan France.
Original
La police française découvre un vaste complot contre le Gouvernement espagnol
Paris, 3 novembre. - Un vaste complot de révolutionnaires espagnols, qui prétendaient susciter en Espagne une véritable révolution contre le gouvernement du général Primo de Rivera et contre la monarchie, vient d'être découvert par notre police. C'est en France, en effet, qu'une association puissante et extrêmement bien organisée de ces anarchistes avait établi son siège, réuni des armes et préparé les détails de l'action. Alertée par les autorités françaises, la police espagnole n'a pas eu encore à intervenir, car la première brigade mobile a pu arrêter les principaux militants et auxiliaires, au moment où ils passaient la frontière.
Après l'attentat contre M. Mussolini
Rome, 3 novembre. - De Bologne, on apprend que le carabinier qui fit dévier la balle tirée par Zamboni abattit celui-ci d'un coup de revolver. Les fascistes, dans la foule, l'achevèrent à coups de poignard, l'étranglèrent et auraient pendu le corps à la lanterne si la police n'était pas intervenue. La police avait pris, avant l'arrivée du Duce à Bologne, des précautions extraordinaires. On confirme que deux mille arrestations préventives avaient été faites; on avait visité les maisons ayant des fenêtres sur les rues où passerait le cortège officiel; les propriétaires avaient été avisés qu'il leur était interdit de recevoir des étrangers, même leurs parents.
Les grands raids aériens
Paris, 3 novembre. - On mande de Nice au Petit Parisien: L'aviateur Noguès est parti, ce matin, de Saint-Raphaël, pour effectuer un raid vers le golfe Persique. Son départ a été précédé de celui de trois Goliath, qui se sont dirigés sur Bizerte. En raison du mauvais temps, il a dû relâcher à Ajaccio.