Departures of note

Barbara Spinelli was an Italian journalist, essayist and politician, born in Rome in 1946 as the daughter of Altiero Spinelli, a founding father of the European Union, and Ursula Hirschmann, a German anti-fascist activist and advocate of European federalism. She was a professional journalist from 1974, beginning her career writing for Il Globo before becoming one of the founders of the daily newspaper La Repubblica. She later worked as a Paris correspondent and columnist for Corriere della Sera and La Stampa, returned to La Repubblica as an editorialist from 2010 to 2014, and from 2016 collaborated with Il Fatto Quotidiano. She also wrote several books, including Il sonno della memoria, which received a special prize at the Viareggio Prize in 2002, and was honored as Journalist of the Year in 2006.

In 2014 Spinelli was among the founders and leading promoters of the left-wing electoral list L'Altra Europa con Tsipras and was elected to the European Parliament, representing Central Italy until 2019. She left the list in May 2015, calling it a failed project, and served the remainder of her mandate as an independent member of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left group. She died in Rome in 2026 at the age of 80.