Crítica
- Mussolini's Agents Were Trying to Provoke Conflicts in France
- Ricciotti Garibaldi Was a Common Spy for Fascism in Nice
- The Spanish Uprising Would Have Had Proportions Not Suspected Until Now
Crítica's front page of 5 November 1926 carried Associated Press cables on the collapse of a Catalan separatist invasion plot on the French–Spanish border and on the Italians caught up in it. One report relayed the French police's claim to hold proof that the Italians in the Perpignan plot were Italian police agents whose mission was to stir up trouble. Another, likening the French secret police's work to an adventure novel, told how French secret agents traced Scivoli, an Italian said to be planning Mussolini's assassination, to Nice, where Ricciotti Garibaldi introduced him to antifascists as a man who would do great things; the headline called Garibaldi a common Fascist spy. A third described Colonel Maciá's arrested followers swearing on their honor not to flee while he urged them, amid sobs, to stay calm.
Translation
Mussolini's Agents Were Trying to Provoke Conflicts in France
PARIS, 5. – The French police announce that they have in their possession evidence showing that the Italians implicated in the plot being hatched in Perpignan were agents of the Italian police, whose mission was reportedly to provoke difficulties between the two…
Ricciotti Garibaldi Was a Common Spy for Fascism in Nice
The work of the French secret police reads like an episode from an adventure novel. It is asserted that Scivoli, an Italian living in Paris, was planning to assassinate Mussolini. The secret agents discovered that Scivoli went to Nice and visited Ricciotti Garibaldi, who introduced him to the antifascist circles as "the man who would do great things."
The Spanish Uprising Would Have Had Proportions Not Suspected Until Now
As soon as the arrested men saw that their chief, Colonel Maciá, was also under arrest, they pledged their word of honor that they would not try to escape. Maciá exhorted them, asking them to remain calm, and his words were heard amid sobs.
Context
Macià's Prats de Molló invasion plan
The arrests in the third report were the end of what became known as the Prats de Molló plot. Francesc Macià and Estat Català planned to send two columns from French territory into Catalonia to occupy Olot and proclaim a Catalan Republic. The idea came from Macià himself, a former colonel in the Spanish Army, which is why the paper calls him "coronel Maciá". He was arrested on 4 November at the country house he was using, and the French police picked up most of the participants near the Spanish border; Wikipedia counts 111 detainees. The headline's uprising "of proportions not suspected until now" is put in the conditional, and the figures did vary widely. TIME wrote ten days later of 400 armed companions disguised as mountaineers, while later accounts count roughly a hundred detainees.
Ricciotti Garibaldi Jr as a double agent
Later accounts confirm the broad outline of the charge against Ricciotti Garibaldi. Macià met Italian exiles in Paris, among them Ricciotti Garibaldi Jr, grandson of the hero of Italian unification, who was not really an antifascist but a double agent for Mussolini's political police. Wikipedia adds that this was how Primo de Rivera learned of the planned invasion, and VilaWeb's 2016 retrospective says Garibaldi denounced the conspiracy to the French police. On 15 November 1926 TIME reported that French investigators had found documents that appeared to mark him as an agent provocateur of the Italian Secret Service. It quoted him admitting that he had taken "Fascist gold" while insisting he had not betrayed the cause. The Scivoli assassination story and the Nice setting come from the paper's cable alone. The later histories place Garibaldi's dealings with Macià among Italian exiles in Paris.
French suspicion of an Italian provocation
The first cable's claim that the Italians were Italian police agents sent to stir up trouble reflected a view widely held in Paris that week. TIME reported that semi-official Parisian journals accused Mussolini of deliberately having his agents egg on a plot that might have embroiled France and Spain. The same week Fascist mobs attacked the French consulates at Tripoli and Benghazi, and the French press saw Mussolini's hand there too. In Crítica's text the sentence breaks off at "between the two", but TIME's account suggests that the two states meant were France and Spain. The episode belongs to a period of tension in which Paris, home to many antifascist exiles, and Rome traded accusations.
What became of Macià and his men
The scene of Macià's men pledging not to flee came before a lenient French response. Most detainees were expelled to Belgium and only around twenty military leaders were brought to trial; the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana counts seventeen and notes that Macià hastened to declare himself solely responsible. The Paris court gave them a symbolic sentence: a 200-franc fine and two months' arrest for illegal possession of arms, plus expulsion from France. Macià's exhortation to stay calm, as Crítica reported it, fits the attitude he took after his arrest, when he presented himself as the one person answerable for the expedition.
Natalio Botana's Crítica and its sensational style
Crítica was the Buenos Aires daily founded in 1913 by the Uruguayan-born Natalio Botana, a pioneer of sensationalist journalism in Argentina, and it became the most widely circulated newspaper in Latin America. Its style shows on this page. All three items carry an Associated Press byline, yet the headlines turn the cables into flat verdicts such as "a common spy", and the Garibaldi story likens the French secret police's work to an adventure novel. The cable texts themselves hedge with "sería" and "se asegura", so the strongest judgments on the page come from the headline writers in Buenos Aires.
Original
Agentes de Mussolini Trataban de Provocar Conflictos en Francia
PARIS, 5. - La policía francesa anuncia que tiene en su poder pruebas que demuestran que los italianos complicados en el complot que se tramaba en Perpiñán eran agentes de la policía italiana, cuya misión sería la de provocar dificultades entre ambos
Ricciotti Garibaldi Era un Vulgar Espía del Fascismo en Niza
El trabajo de la policía secreta francesa parece un episodio de una novela de aventuras. Se asegura que Scivoli, residente italiano en París, proyectaba asesinar a Mussolini. Los agentes secretos descubrieron que Scivoli se dirigió a Niza y visitó a Ricciotti Garibaldi, quien lo presentó a los círculos antifascistas como " el hombre que haría grandes cosas ".
El Levantamiento Español Tendría Proporciones no Sospechadas Hasta Ahora
. Tan pronto como los arrestados vieron que su jefe, el coronel Maciá, también estaba detenido, empeñaron su palabra de honor de que no intentarian escapar. Maciá los exhortó, pidiéndoles que permanecieran tranquilos, siendo sus palabras escuchadas en medio de sollozos.
Source: Source: Internet Archive / Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina