Prominent Italian journalist, essayist, and former Member of the European Parliament Barbara Spinelli has died in Rome at the age of 80. Born in the Italian capital in 1946 to Ursula Hirschmann and Altiero Spinelli—one of the founding fathers of the European Union—Spinelli treated Europe, democracy, anti-fascism, and the relationship between power and citizens as her lifelong professional and familial legacy. She began her career at the daily newspaper Il Globo, co-founded La Repubblica in 1976, and later worked as a Paris correspondent and columnist for Corriere della Sera and La Stampa. She returned to La Repubblica as a columnist between 2010 and 2014, and wrote for Il Fatto Quotidiano starting in 2016.

In 2014, she was elected to the European Parliament on the list of "The Other Europe with Tsipras," later resigning from the ticket to serve out her term as an independent in Strasbourg until 2019. Spinelli passed away sixteen years after the death of her longtime partner, former Italian government minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa. In accordance with her wishes, her funeral will be held in strict privacy.