In the following article, I trace the history of the free radios of the 1970s from three different perspectives. First of all, I deal with probably the best known of the free radios: Radio Alice, founded in Bologna in 1976 and closed down by the police on March 12, 1977, during the student protests. I outline their communicative approach and the aftermath of the closure, which contributed much to the radio’s later fame. Second, I outline the history of free radios in a transnational Western European perspective. Although there were different conditions that enabled or hindered the success of free radios, a transnational «need to express oneself» and the search for a new radio form connected the different national experiences. Finally, I elaborate on a thought expressed by Umberto Eco in a 1977 newspaper article. He emphasized not so much the social struggle of free radios as the technological and communicative development that their emergence had facilitated. My thesis is that the history of free radios can be read as a «panoply of contemporary possibilities». It is instructive on many levels for thinking about the future of democratic communication in Europe and beyond.

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