Sparta Trivella (1914-2001) and Lea Trivella (1918-2006)

Sparta Trivella and Lea Trivella, born in 1914 and 1918, were the youngest daughters of the family of Ranieri Trivella and Edvige Gelli. Originally from the province of Pisa, their parents first moved to La Spezia and then, as many others, became “a family that emigrated to France because of Fascism”. Ranieri Trivella who “had taken his third grade license in 1913 so that he could vote in the universal elections”, was considered by the fascist police to be an active antifascist who professed and propagated the subversive ideas of the maximalist socialist party. “Dad was a militant and also held rallies […] he was threatened by the podestà with harsh lessons (such as castor oil or being put into prison) and was threatened with a trial”.

Indeed, despite the fact that the Fascist system of control and repression relegated her to a role of subalternity and inactivity in relation to her husband, it was Elvide Gelli who represented a constant point of reference to political antifascism and women’s emancipation in the home, as emerged from their recollections: “My mother Hedwig, but we called her Elvide, was a courageous woman with a strong personality, and we can say that both Sparta and I followed into her footsteps in the following years”. “The Carnival, the school, the World War years, the socialism, the beginning of fascism, my father being a socialist… and my mother too, but of course, being a working-class illiterate woman, she did not militate, but from her I learned how to transmit “ideas orally”. “She was always very controversial with my father, especially politically, but she was very committed to running the family well. She was the administrator of our home and educated us free such as in the tradition of Tuscany and the Ligurian town where I was born”.

Since they were young girls, the sisters had a free education that was also reflected in their readings, ranging from Hugo, Tolstoy, Manzoni to the writings of Marx, from the study of history to reflections on the present through readings of leaflets and newspapers reporting news about Fascist Italy. “The subject I liked the most was history, especially because a lot of attention was given to the Revolution and therefore to the French Republic. I felt very revolutionary, because in Italy I had known a couple who had been in Moscow, so I had heard about the Revolution of the Soviets, about Lenin and  that this had been made by the workers and the sailors. I didn’t understand why my socialist father partly shared ideas of the Russian Revolution, while he also told us a lot about the French revolution. Maybe because of things he heard in Italy, which convinced him more. More and more I was on the side of my mother who said: ‘You say you are revolutionaries, socialists, but at home, with your wives, with your little children, you do not behave well, because often you act as the “masters’’: my mother’s words became concrete facts”.

In the accounts of the two sisters, the days of French adolescence were punctuated by reading, classical music, tailoring work and political activity; with thoughts always turned toward Italy – “the emigration groups managed to get the Avanti, L’Unità, or some small-format anti-fascist leaflets made of tissue paper. They were so valuable because they brought us news from our Italy, but also reports of books written by political exiles” – the two women became close to the trade unions and trained in the Parisian political climate. “As we both worked, we joined the French trade union, the CGT, attended labor and neighborhood meetings. […] I had picked up a pamphlet by Marx, read it, but certainly did not understand much about it”. In solidarity with the French people they participated against the attempted coup d´état by the Croix de feux in 1934: “Fascists in France were not supposed to gain a foothold”. 

Through the anti-fascist political network Sparta and Lea Trivella met their future comrades, Odoardo Ugolini and Siro Lupieri respectively. Sparta Trivella recalled years later, with a veil of sadness and a sense of loneliness, the incomprehension of her family and friends in the face of her condition and choices: “When in January 1939 we decided to move in together without getting married, it was a great sorrow for my family. […] My courageous mother, emancipated for that time, also did not understand me. But the biggest battle was among my friends, some even companions who were evolved in words, but did not understand me, yet I was putting into practice what we often said among ourselves: that in a couple what counts are feelings, love and physical attraction. With my choice, the spirit of being consequently ‘woman,’ ‘person,’ ‘free’ was accentuated in me”.

The Trivella sisters and their respective companions followed world events closely, and when the war came, with the hardships and privations it usually brings, the young women attempted to displace for some time with their mother to the French countryside: “It was not easy at that time. The French peasants […] hated us. […] Sparta and I were pregnant at that time and with the cold weather it was a real torment, so we convinced our mother and after a short time we returned to Paris to our homes. The men were unemployed, so were we, the ration book was going to be in place, we were very young and the hunger was tremendous, so with Sparta we made military shirts”. Lea Trivella had to give birth to her first daughter in the midst of a bombing.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the two sisters did not stop their care work. On the contrary, they were active in organizing demonstrations, pro-vote committees, and reopening kindergartens and schools.

Despite the difficulties of the separation from her comrade which forced her to be a single mother, Sparta managed to impose her own political role in the following years and embarked on a career in the party, thanks to her preparation. That led her to travel, for example to Calabria to contribute to the struggles of the peasants, as far as Berlin and China for the International Women’s Federation. In the 1960s she returned to Pesaro where she took part in the city council and was responsible for the Italian Women’s Union (Udi). 

Lea also continued her activity in the Udi and, during the judiciary reaction against the resistance, she suffered a trial – later resolved for lack of evidence – because a gun was found wrapped in the newspaper “Noi Donne,” for which she was responsible for. In the following years she devoted herself mainly to the creation of Social Centers for the Elderly and to courses at the University for the Free Age, with a particular passion for ceramics, a sign of the not-lost manual dexterity. 

That the Trivella family was now recognizable and esteemed in the city is also demonstrated by the episode of Elvide Gelli’s funeral, as Lea recalled: “The comrades did their best with flags and a parade on foot […]. The parish priest of the cemetery did not want the headstone to be introduced, which said ‘She lived and fought for socialism,’ but the local comrades offered them the expenses of the stonemason and the headstone was erected”.

The sisters Sparta and Lea Trivella, though taking different paths, always oriented their lives toward the rights of women and the weakest, for peace and justice, and were influential landmarks for the city of Pesaro. In the 1990s, in a climate of renewed attention to individual biographies and stories of Resistance without arms, they both put their memoirs in writing.

In 1996, the City of Cascina (Pisa), where the Trivella family was originally from, awarded them both honorary citizenship.

Sparta died in 2001 and Lea in 2006.

The funerals of both were held in a secular form inside the headquarters of Udi in Pesaro, the organization for which they spent their entire lives and to which they donated their personal archives.