Tiberio Murgia

Tiberio Murgia (5 February 1929 – 20 August 2010) was an Italian film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films between 1958 and 2009. Biography Born into a humble family, Murgia began working as a laborer from an early age. At the age of twenty he was already a peddler for l'Unità, the newspaper of the Italian Communist Party. The managing directors of the local branch of the party recognized particular political skills in him and send him to the National School for the party leaders in Frattocchie in the province of Rome. After his return, six months later, he became the Secretary of the Young Communist League and married. After some time, however, Murgia began to entertain a relationship with a fellow party member, who was also married. Murgia was then expelled because of this clandestine affair. Murgia then emigrated to Marcinelle, in Belgium, to work at the Bois du Cazier coalmine which had several thousands of Italian workers as miners, pursuant to the Italian Belgian Protocol of 20 June 1946. There also Murgia established a relationship with the wife of a Belgian coworker and escaped death that fatal night of the Marcinelle mining disaster, in which a gas explosion killed all the miners on his shift, including the woman's husband. Murgia later claimed, although some doubt his story, that he had been feigning illness in order to obtain sick leave so that he could spend the night with the woman.