Antonio Padellaro: The gesture of Almirante and Berlinguer

Antonio Padellaro
Ed. Paper First, Rome 2019
pagg.89

The author, former editor of Il Fatto Quotidiano, is a journalist who needs no introduction. He tells us of a fact, indeed of a gesture, that happened between the 1978 and the 1979. The 1978 was the year of the three popes, Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II; it was the year of the kidnapping and killing, by the Red Brigades, after 55 days of imprisonment, of Aldo Moro; was the year in which numerous BR attacks were counted. Only in the month of July there were more than thirty.

"They were the disgusting years' 70, when it was considered normal to go out and see blood on the sidewalks", as Pietrangelo Buttafuoco said during the presentation of this essay, in a bookstore in Rome. And it was at that time that two protagonists of the political world of that time decided to meet four or six times.

These are Giorgio Almirante and Enrico Berlinguer; first secretary of the Italian Social Movement; second secretary of the Italian Communist Party. There were two other men who knew of these meetings: Massimo Magliaro, who at the time was the spokesman for Almirante and head of the MSI and Antonio Tatò, who held the same position in the PCI.

To be still alive is only Massimo Magliaro who, in the 1998, mentioned these meetings to a journalist from the Republic, Sebastiano Messina, who, in March of that year, published an article entitled "Almirante and Berlinguer, those secret meetings ", which had no great resonance and was soon forgotten. "Magliaro is a reliable person but has remained the only living eyewitness. In theory (a lot in theory) everything could have been invented. "

The place chosen for the meetings, which took place on Friday afternoon, was a room on the top floor of Palazzo Montecitorio. What is important to emphasize is the gesture of the repeatedly repeated appointment of two men who have not been "Only implacable political adversaries but enemies for the skin. Since the end of the war, the Italian Left, dominated by the PCI, and the so-called constitutional arch (all the parties born of the Resistance with strict exclusion of the MSI on the right) consider Almirante a dirty fascist, an outcast, a wreck of history. But above all a partisan gunman, according to the sentence that has forever branded his belonging to the Salò republicans. "

However, those were the years when, among some militants of those two political parties, there was that respect created by the civil war, "Among those who had really fought and risked their skin on opposite trenches."

What the secretaries said was not known, since the two spokesmen were excluded from the talks. "Think: two characters who have the word as their main work tool but who decide not to speak, and never for any reason about their confidences. Because, only absolute confidentiality could, in their intentions, produce something good for their country. Now think of the noise that accompanies every useless sigh of the politics that surrounds us today. "

Probably the first gesture was made by Berlinguer, also because "Almirante was well aware of his condition of political inferiority compared to the great leader of the PCI: he knew that in the vision of the Left he remained an outcast, the fascist with whom it would have been even absurd to take a coffee. [...] On the other hand Berlinguer had been many times the protagonist of political gestures of enormous clamor and politically unsettling. " It was he, in fact, to propose the historic compromise with the DC or to declare that he felt more protected by the NATO missile shield, making Moscow irritate.

"We can struggle in a thousand hypotheses, but the words we exchanged will never be known. But a gesture was made. It is not important to know by whom. It doesn't matter why. But we know that it was in that period - the late seventies and early eighties - that terrorism in Italy began its waning phase after reaching, with the seizure and murder of Aldo Moro, the apogee of firepower. We like to think that the gesture of Almirante and Berlinguer, that gesture, was a light after so much darkness. The gesture, therefore, as an action that produces incalculable positive consequences. As a testimony and example. As a life discipline. But also the gesture that gives value to words. Which he could do without. "

Berlinguer was the first to leave this land between the two political leaders. After being probably the object of an attack in Sofia, the 3 October 1973, at the end of a difficult visit to Bulgaria, where, in a car accident, he was saved by a miracle and after being, together with Andreotti, in the squad of those to be kidnapped by the BR, who then chose Moro, Berlinguer, the 7 June 1984, in Padua, during the closing rally of the electoral campaign for the European Championships, he suffered a stroke. He managed to finish his speech, with difficulty, before collapsing. 11 June will die.

Almirante, on a warm June afternoon, will cross the door of the Botteghe Oscure. "No one breath. [...] The dignitaries of the great mourning party are making their way. Ritto, in his gray suit, stop in the middle of the funeral chamber. The sign of the cross is made and slightly bowed in front of the light wooden case. He will say: I have come to pay tribute to a man from whom he has divided everything but which I have always esteemed and appreciated. "

In light of all this, the author concludes, "Why not dedicate a street, a square to those who took their lives seriously and those of others? Defying the fear of not being understood. To be misunderstood. Putting respect in place of hatred. Of rivalry, understanding. Of sarcasm, loyalty. And perhaps, who knows, friendship. Piazza Almirante and Berlinguer. "

Gianlorenzo Capano