Pietro Rocca

Rocca returned to Ajaccio and, with other combat veterans disillusioned in the French state and nation, founded the Corsican literary magazine A Muvra (the Muflon).

This was the case for Olivier Mordrel in Brittany, l'abbé Gantois in French Flanders et Hermann Bickler, who together coordinated their efforts through the journal Peuples et frontières (1936 to 1938) - the Corsican perspective was provided by Rocca.

From 1935 Rocca and A Muvra began to openly reject the idea that Corsica had a place within the French state, a position developed in contact with other Corsican intellectuals such as Petru Giovacchini, Marco Angeli di Sartèna, and Marta Renucci.

The end result was Italian irredentism, the idea that Corsica (through its language and long historical connections) was a culturally-Italic nation and would be better off merging into the Kingdom of Italy.

In 1939, as war with Germany and Italy approached, Rocca was arrested and his journal suspended for the crime of "threatening the authority of France in the territories under its control".

[2] After the end of the world war and the foundation of the Fourth Republic, in 1946 Rocca was sentenced to 15 years of jail and sent to the forced labour camp on Devil's Island (French Guiana).