Michele Angiolillo

Michele Angiolillo Lombardi (Italian pronunciation: [miˈkɛle andʒoˈlillo]; 5 June 1871 – 20 August 1897) was an Italian anarchist, born in Foggia, Italy. He assassinated Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas in 1897 and was captured and executed by Spanish authorities in the same year.

Barcelona bombing and Montjuïc repression

On June 7, 1896, a bomb was thrown at the Corpus Christi procession in Barcelona. At least twelve people died and 45 were seriously injured. The crime was attributed by police to an unidentified anarchist.

The attack precipitated an aggressive reprisal against Spanish anarchists, socialists and republicans—three hundred alleged revolutionaries were jailed at Montjuïc Fortress, and confessions were extracted by torture. The prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo himself ordered the repression. Reports of the prisoner abuse were circulated widely in the European press.

Of the 87 prisoners taken to trial at Montjuïc, eight received death sentences; five executions were carried out. Many others were condemned to long imprisonment and the remaining prisoners were deported to Río de Oro (a Spanish colony in what is now the disputed Western Sahara).

The assassination of Cánovas del Castillo

Using a false identity, Michele Angiolillo traveled to Spain from Paris (via London) to avenge the Montjuïc persecutions. There is some evidence that he originally planned to kill one or two young members of the Spanish royal family, but was dissuaded by Puerto Rican nationalist leader Ramón Emeterio Betances, who suggested Cánovas del Castillo as a target instead. Betances provided logistical assistance for Angiolillo's safe travel into Spain, as well as some money. On 8 August 1897, Angiolillo found Cánovas alone at the thermal bath resort of Santa Águeda (now a psychiatric hospital) in Mondragón, Guipúzcoa, and shot him dead. The Prime Minister’s wife hurried 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.” The repression and mass torture at Montjuich was a direct factor behind Michele Angiolillo's decision to assassinate Cánovas. The New York Times wrote:

Angiolillo allowed the authorities to capture him and vehemently denied other parties' involvement in the assassination. He was executed by garotte in the nearby town of Vergara.