The Alfa Romeo Portello plant, on the northwestern outskirts of Milan, became a focal point of the 1920 factory occupations. Its significance lay in the sharp contrast contained within its walls: engineers were preparing an ambitious new sports car while workers, after a bitter wage dispute, raised red flags bearing the hammer and sickle and took control of the factory.

Industrial Setting and the RL

The plant was described as an ultra-modern manufacturing facility at the forefront of Europe. Its engineers were preparing the Alfa Romeo RL, a postwar sports model with an innovative six-cylinder inline engine and a two-seat Spider chassis. The new car was intended to fill a gap in the market, and executives, managers, and owners placed high hopes in producing the red Torpedo in a series of versions.

Those hopes were shared, in a different sense, by the workers. On September 1, they waved red flags over the factory. The same site that embodied industrial modernization and plans for expanded production had become a place where workers asserted a competing claim over production and authority.

Wage Dispute and Occupation

The immediate conflict followed a prolonged dispute over wage increases. Negotiations broke off in mid-August after employers’ representative attorney Rotigliano rejected further concessions. Workers responded with obstructionism, slowing production without leaving their jobs. On August 30, despite the Milan prefect’s plea that he refrain, Nicola Romeo proclaimed a lockout at his factory. FIOM, the metalworkers’ union, answered by announcing an occupation.

Within hours, workers had occupied factories across Milan, and managers—and in some cases owners—were held there. The following day, industrialists declared a nationwide lockout; the General Confederation of Labour responded by mobilizing workers to occupy more than 600 manufacturing plants across Italy. At the Portello plant, the red flag above the factory made the national confrontation visible at a single industrial site.

A Site of Wider Political Anxiety

The occupations transformed factory courtyards and sheds into bivouacs and alarmed the middle classes, already unsettled by recent disputes in the Po Valley. The red flag at Alfa Romeo thus signified more than a local workplace action: it marked the spread of the occupation from Milan’s factories into a nationwide struggle over labor and industrial control. The plant’s juxtaposition of a hoped-for new car and a workers’ occupation gave concrete form to the period’s collision between industrial ambition and social conflict.