Barbara Spinelli, the renowned Italian journalist and former member of the European Parliament, has died at the age of 80. She was the daughter of Altiero Spinelli, one of the figures who laid the foundations for a united Europe.
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The news was confirmed by sources at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, following a report by the daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, with which Spinelli had worked for about 10 years.
Raised in a family closely connected to the idea of European unity and opposition to totalitarianism, Barbara Spinelli carried on a long tradition of public engagement. Her father, Altiero Spinelli, and her mother, Ursula Hirschmann, met during World War II while they were interned as anti-fascists on the island of Ventotene. That experience led to the Ventotene Manifesto, one of the foundational documents of European federalism.
In her personal life, she was in a relationship for many years with the Italian economist and politician Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, who played an important role in the creation of the euro, until his death in 2010.
The family expressed its gratitude to the doctors and staff of the Villa del Rosario clinic for their care during her final period. The funeral will be held privately. “The family thanks everyone who loved and valued her,” the announcement said.
Barbara Spinelli began her career at the newspaper Il Globo and was among the founders of La Repubblica. During her long career, she worked with Corriere della Sera, served as a correspondent from Paris and as an editorial writer for La Stampa, and later continued writing for La Repubblica.
For about a decade, she was a contributor to Il Fatto Quotidiano. Her final article was published in March and addressed the U.S.-Iran conflict under the headline “This war, too, could have been avoided.”
Alongside journalism, she was also involved in politics, with positions rooted in anti-fascism and peace.
In 2014, she promoted the “The Other Europe with Tsipras” list, which sought to support Greek leader Alexis Tsipras’s bid to become president of the European Commission. In the European elections, she received the most preference votes within the coalition, making her its most-voted candidate.
A year later, she said the political project had failed, but continued her work in the European Parliament as an independent MEP in the European United Left group.
With her death, Italian journalism and European debate have lost one of the important voices of recent decades.
