Mayor Sala from the stage of April 25 in Milan: “Those who want to ban freedoms put themselves out of history”. The full speech

Good morning everyone, good morning everyone.

Let me say something from the heart: thank you. Thank you, truly, for being here in this square, so many, so many.

It is more important than ever to be here today. Milan, an anti-fascist city, has always been a fundamental place and moment for Italy. I’m here with all of you to confirm it – April 25, 2023: Milan is an anti-fascist city, deeply anti-fascist. I said it recently and I intend to reiterate it: in the current situation there is the risk of an omission of what has been our history. It is a risk we see every day. As it was recently written: “We are venturing into an anonymous democracy without fathers, without sins and without judgments, simply alien to history and its obligations”. Here, this continuous removal of the ignominy of fascism in Italy does not sit well with me, with us, in Milan!

The other day I saw a big man walking the infamous paths of Auschwitz, with his dark coat and white hair of someone born in the middle of the Second World War. I saw his gaze, hard and moved at the same time, and I heard his words, hard and moved. It was Sergio Mattarella, the President of our Republic.

The Republic born from the Resistance. This great man restored history. Here is what he said: “We are here today to pay homage and remember the millions of citizens murdered by a bloody regime such as the Nazis who, with the complicity of European fascist regimes, handed over their fellow citizens to the executioners, committed a horrendous crime against humanity”. We must remember! Because we can clearly see what happens if we fail to keep an eye on the roots of the struggle for freedom and democracy. We saw it on Capitol Hill, we saw it in Brasilia.

And we saw it, tragically, in Bucha in the Ukraine. There a horror takes shape, which would claim to tell us: enough with progress. That is: enough with civil rights, enough with political rights, enough with all rights. Enough with the science. Enough with love, with the freedom to be what you dream and feel like you are. This is the dream of the extreme right, of extreme nationalisms: enough with progress. We don’t look forward but we look back. And yet looking back we take the opportunity to rewrite history.

We, who are in this square today, know well what those who foment hatred and violence have in mind in this way: they want a new type of authoritarianism, suitable for our contemporaneity. And we are able to say once again to this authoritarianism: no! To this struggle against the present and the future we say: no!

We know her by heart “Bella ciao”. It is our song, which has become a world anthem. It is sung about the “flower of the partisan, who died for freedom”. And what is this flower? It’s the future. Our future is in that flower. Dear friends, April 25 is not only what happened. It is what must continue to happen always. The universal value of this day so felt, for 78 years, is to let us enter the future with the strength of freedom and democracy. April 25 is a day of liberation. From what, we know. But to where? To be free to do what? Let me give you a very personal example. I definitely feel Milanese and I certainly feel Italian. But I feel European in the same way. And I believe that young men and women experience the same thing, indeed perhaps more than I do, as a fact that has by now been acquired. But what does it mean to feel European?

First of all, look: it wasn’t obvious. The day after April 25, 1945, a process began which painstakingly guaranteed reunification and peace for an entire continent, whose history was an endless story of conflicts. We got there crooked, often contradictory, with distortions to fix and injustices to heal – but we got to the birth of European identity.

This European identity, that is, an identity of many different nations, means freedom. Freedom to love how it feels. Freedom to start a family without impositions and impediments to love. Freedom to live and breathe in a harmonious environment. Freedom to be cared for and accompanied in sickness and old age. Freedom to work in safety and to be rewarded according to justice. Freedom to be protected, as much as possible by science and education. Freedom from wars, from endemic poverty. Freedom from the nightmare of the most dramatic hardships. In other continents, in other countries, all this is a dream. April 25 is this universal welfare: guaranteeing freedom for human dignity. This welfare is European. It is made? No, it is not fully realized yet. We still have to make it concrete, for anyone. But it is largely there, on the table, in the identity cards of every European. Anyone who intends to withdraw from this direction, which Europe has developed up to now, contradicts the values ​​of the Italian 25th of April, but let me also say: the European 25th of April. One can be conservative, look to the roots, temper the thrust of progress, out of prudence, out of caution, out of fear. But those drives cannot be denied or prevented by force. Because whoever wants to ban freedom puts themselves out of history. It aligns itself with the chaos of the far right. The chaos of autocratic states dreamed of by suprematisms, nationalisms, new fascisms. Namely: dramatic restrictions on freedoms, opponents in prison or committed suicide, massacres and unspeakable horrors in wars of domination, ethnic cleansing, threats of nuclear apocalypse.

In any case, our word is: progress. There is no going back from modernity, from contemporaneity. Which are keywords. Based on these two words, I want to name a great partisan, who in recent months often surfaces in the speeches of those who are now in government. I’m talking about Enrico Mattei. Anti-fascist and, I say, designer of the modernity and contemporaneity of our country. A man, a partisan, who lit up the future. Our future. Today he would be at the forefront of leading Italy and Europe to the breakthrough of sustainable energies and not instead of denying the environmental transition, like those who quote him inappropriately.

Incidentally, because perhaps he has studied his life only for the part that is most convenient. In the days following the Liberation, the partisan commander Enrico Mattei was speaking from this stage, exactly where I am. He gave an ideal definition of what it takes to be, to bring April 25th into the future. One must be “volunteers for freedom and rebels for love”. We will do everything to live up to these words.