The figure
Altiero Spinelli's life, thought and action are witnessed and documented in the multi-faceted and sizeable wealth of documents stored in the Altiero Spinelli Fund.Spinelli, born in Rome on August 31, 1907, joined the Italian Communist Party at a very young age, participating in its underground political activity. Sentenced by the Special Tribunal to sixteen years, he served ten years in jail and six years in confinement on the Pontine Islands (Ponza and Ventotene).
Spinelli left the Communist Party and in 1941, during his confinement, drew up and drafted together with Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni the document “For a Free and United Europe. Project for a Manifesto”, better known as the "Ventotene Manifesto". With the fall of Fascism he regained his freedom and in August 1943, founded in Milan the European Federalist Movement (EFM), with the Manifesto as its programme. As a refugee in Switzerland he began circulating the federalist ideas among the political exiles and the Resistance movements in Europe. He participated in the anti-fascist struggle with the Partito d'Azione (Action Party - AP) as a member of the AP-Northern Italy's political secretariat and after 1945, as a member of its national secretariat.
From 1948 to the beginning of the 1960s, Altiero Spinelli played an intensively active role as the General Secretary of the EFM and general delegate of the Union of European Federalists (UEF). His support of the European Defense Community was strong and effective as was his action in favour of the Congress of the European People and the distribution of the federalist press. His commitment to Italy’s cultural and political life was wide-ranging and continuous. He founded the Italian Committee for European Democracy (1963) and the Institute for International Affairs (Istituto Affari Internazionali, 1965), of which he was the Director until 1970, and was among the promoters of the Comunità (Community) Movement and the Adriano Olivetti Foundation (1962). Member of the editorial staff of the review "Il Mulino" and of the Association of Politics and Culture of the same name, he supported and stimulated not only expressly pro-European associations and activities but also a wide range of Italian and international initiatives dedicated in different ways to studying and/or highlighting the contradiction between the political and nationalist organisation of Europe and the world and the real needs of the peoples (through his relations with American and European universities and centres of study, his support for the struggle against the Spanish and Greek dictatorships and for the campaign for Algerian independence, his activity of criticism and analysis of Euro-Atlantic relations and of those with Eastern Europe and the Middle East).
In the late 1960s Spinelli became foreign affairs adviser to the Socialist Italian Foreign Minister Pietro Nenni. As Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna (1962-1965), he strove untiringly to spread the idea that the process of European integration must ultimately lead to the European Federation; to that end, he engaged in a strenuous editorial activity and participated in many radio and television programmes. From 1970 to 1976, he served in the European Commission, taking responsibility for industrial policy and research. In 1976, he was elected to the Italian Parliament (where he also became President of the Independent Left Group) and to the European Parliament.
In 1979, the year of the first European elections with direct and universal suffrage, Spinelli was re-elected to the European Parliament and during his term founded the "Crocodile Club" (1981), a trans-national association of federalist MEPs created to support his last major political initiative, culminating in the adoption by the European Parliament (1984) of the "Draft Treaty establishing the European Union".
Author of many essays and of an intense autobiography, Altiero Spinelli died in Rome on May 23, 1986, not before having proposed yet again a new political strategy aimed at endowing the European Parliament with a more legitimate and democratic constituent mandate.
