Alessandro Di Battista, a former lawmaker with the Five Star Movement, was in Cuba preparing a series of reports
14ymedio, Havana, August 30, 2026 / The coincidence seems written for a news feature. Alessandro Di Battista, the former Italian lawmaker whom his country’s press dubbed for years the “Italian Che” or the “Che grillino” – as followers of Beppe Grillo and the Five Star Movement are known in Italy – suffered a serious medical episode precisely in Santa Clara, the Cuban city where Ernesto Guevara’s mausoleum is located. After remaining unconscious for several hours, he was taken by ambulance to Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in Havana, where he remains admitted.
This Sunday, however, the first signs of recovery arrived. “I will do everything possible to return soon,” wrote Di Battista, 48, on Instagram, in response to a message from Ilaria Loquenzi, who was part of the Five Star Movement’s (M5S) communications team when he was a lawmaker. These are the politician and journalist’s first public words since he fell ill.
He was taken to the 19th floor of the Ameijeiras and immediately underwent vital-sign monitoring and other specialized tests
Di Battista began to feel unwell on Friday, while he was in Santa Clara on a work trip through the island. According to the Italian news agency Ansa, he suffered a severe headache and subsequently lost consciousness for several hours. Upon regaining it, he was able to speak with doctors, who decided to transfer him by road some 300 kilometers to Havana.
On Saturday night he arrived by ambulance at the Hermanos Ameijeiras. An Ansa journalist personally witnessed his admission to the center, where Di Battista entered lying on a stretcher, but lucid and able to respond to questions from doctors and nurses. He was taken to the 19th floor and immediately underwent vital-sign monitoring and other specialized tests.
So far, no official medical bulletin with a precise diagnosis has been released. Some Italian media have floated various hypotheses based on the intensity of the headaches and the temporary loss of consciousness, but neither Cuban nor Italian authorities have publicly confirmed the cause of the episode.
The newspaper itself confirmed that he was working on the island when he began to suffer “strange headaches” that grew progressively worse
Giorgia Meloni’s government is closely following the case and has a medically equipped plane on standby to repatriate Di Battista. The transfer will depend, however, on the doctors’ decision, who must determine whether the trip poses any risk to his health. Italy’s ambassador to Cuba, Simona De Martino, traveled to Santa Clara, while the foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said he was in contact with the diplomatic mission and with the former lawmaker’s family.
Di Battista was not in Cuba on vacation. Having stayed away from Parliament for years, he has devoted himself to journalism, books and travel, and on this occasion was preparing a series of reports for Il Fatto Quotidiano and its audiovisual arm, TvLoft, titled La polvere del mondo (The Dust of the World). The newspaper itself confirmed that he was working on the island when he began to suffer “strange headaches” that grew progressively worse.
That the episode occurred in Santa Clara is particularly striking given the Italian’s political biography. Ansa recalled this Saturday that Ernesto Guevara is one of the figures Di Battista has championed for years. Of the Argentine guerrilla fighter, he once said he had left as a lesson what “the fervent will of a human being” can achieve.
‘La Razón’ highlighted his travels through Latin America and his profile as an agitator within the M5S.
The association between the two goes back a long way. In 2018, the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia titled a profile on Di Battista The Return of the Che Grillino after he returned to Rome following more than six months traveling through the Americas. The paper recalled at the time that he had publicly recommended reading Che and Marx, and that he had even spoken of Guevara in the Italian Parliament as a man capable of making history by standing up to power.
A year later, another Spanish newspaper, La Razón, presented him outright as the “Italian Che Guevara,” after Di Battista and Luigi Di Maio staged an outreach to the French yellow vests that caused a serious diplomatic rift between Rome and Paris. The paper highlighted at the time his travels through Latin America and his profile as an agitator within the M5S.
He is currently vice president of Schierarsi, a political activism association that has driven campaigns related to Palestine.
Born in Rome in 1978, Di Battista was a lawmaker between 2013 and 2018 and became one of the M5S’s most charismatic leaders. His vehement style and his rhetoric against traditional politics gave him enormous popularity among the party’s grassroots, although he never held the main institutional posts.
He then progressively withdrew from the front line and broke with the M5S in 2021, in disagreement with the movement’s support for Mario Draghi’s government. He is currently vice president of Schierarsi, a political activism association that has driven campaigns related to Palestine, public water and other social causes.
Italian politics, despite deep divisions between parties, reacted in almost unanimous fashion to the news of his hospitalization. The M5S expressed its “great concern” and voiced solidarity with his family, while leaders from political forces on both the left and the right sent messages of support.
Translated by GH
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