Singing Bella Ciao, the famous song of the Italian resistance fighters, hundreds of anti-fascists will march on Friday October 28 in Predappio, in northern Italy, to celebrate the liberation of the city in 1944 by the Allies. A date that owes nothing to chance, explains Gianfranco Miro Gori, the local president of the Association of Partisans of Italy (ANPI): “The meaning of this liberation was to say: ‘you, Mussolini, you made the March on Rome [le défilé de 26 000 chemises noires venant de toute l’Italie] on October 28, 1922, we on October 28, 1944 we drive you out of your native village. Symbolically, it is very strong, because a whole speech was built on Mussolini, son of Emilia Romagna, son of Predappio, a rhetoric that told Romagna as the native land of fascism”.
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No anti-fascist tagliatelle, a pasta dish shared between demonstrators as the Association of Partisans usually offers: this year, it is organizing a large national procession but without the mayor of Predappio Roberto Canali. While Giorgia Meloni and his Fratelli d’Italia party won power through the ballot box, some fear an authoritarian drift and the elected official fears for the safety of the parade, even if the demonstration of those nostalgic for Mussolini will take place on Sunday.“Fortunately, they will take place at two different times, but the partisan demonstration is taking place on the very day of the centenary of the March on Rome, recalls Roberto Canali, so honestly I’m a little worried because it’s a bit of a special moment and on both sides the tone has risen.”
“There can always be the risk of overflow by extreme fringes”.
Roberto Canali, Mayor of Predappioat franceinfo
The nostalgics who thus greet the “Comrade Mussolini” will therefore meet two days later. To calm things down, Franco d’Emilio, who presents an exhibition on the centenary of the March on Rome in Predappio, proposes to transform the crypt of the “Duce” into a national monument. This is already the case with his birthplace, he points out: “A national monument has its own management which allows you to avoid, for example, access being regulated – because that’s how you create nostalgia and you know what I mean – so that would change everything. Because in a national monument there is the authority of the State and thus one would visit the crypt with the same criteria as the visit of a museum.
In Predappio, Fratelli d’Italia, the party of Giorgia Meloni, obtained almost 37% of the vote, ten points more than the national average.
One hundred years after Mussolini’s march on Rome, Bruce de Galzain’s report to Predappio
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