Michele Angiolillo

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Michele Angiolillo Lombardi (June 5, 1871, Foggia, Italy - August 20 1897, Vergara, Guipúzcoa, Spain), Italian anarchist.

In June 1896, a bomb was thrown against the Corpus Christi procession in Barcelona, Spain. The attack precipitated an aggressive reprisal against anarchists, socialists and republicans. Thus, four hundred alleged revolutionaries were jailed at Montjuïc Fortress, overlooking Barcelona. Many died due to subsequent tortures. Of the 87 prisoners taken to the tribunal, eight got death sentences and nine were condemned to long imprisonment. The other seventy one accused revolutionaries were declared innocent by the tribunal, but were anyway deported to Río de Oro, a Spanish colony in West Africa, by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo's government.

Revenge for the Montjuïc horrors was the reason for Angiolillo to enter Spain from London using a false identity, searching for the President of the Spanish Council of Government, Cánovas del Castillo. Angiolillo finally found Cánovas alone at the thermal bath resort of Santa Águeda (now a psychiatric hospital), in Mondragón, Guipúzcoa and shot him dead on August 8, 1897. The wife of Cánovas came to the scene, shouting "Murderer! Murderer!" after the gunman. Angiolillo, in turn, bowed and declared, "Pardon, Madame. I respect you as a lady, but I regret that you were the wife of that man."

Angiolillo allowed the authorities to capture him, probably attempting to prevent the Spanish government from using the search for Canovas' killer as an excuse for a heavier repression. He was executed by garrote in the nearby town of Vergara, on August 20.

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