Annuario 2020 – Insabbiare il tragico volo – Marco Giani

The Milan State Archive contains several sources for the history of sports that are still unused by researchers, such as a file on Gabriella “Gaby” Angelini’s death (1932/1933). Gaby was a young Milanese aviator, the first Italian woman to fly alone to several North-European countries in the summer of 1932. A few months later, while flying from Rome to Delhi, she died in an airplane crash in the Libyan Desert. The file preserved in the Milan State Archives sheds light on how the Fascist regime was able to control the news about Gaby’s death, and on the funeral ceremonies held in
Milan in mid-December 1932, when public rituals previously reserved to men were extended to this young girl, a sporting symbol of the Fascist “new woman.”