«The Constitution was born where the partisans fell. Now and always Resistance»- Corriere.it

«Now and always Resistance». It’s nearly one o’clock when Sergio Mattarella
in his speech of April 25 he pronounced the word – for some – more unpronounceable: anti-fascists. And just mention it the Constitutionin these “mountains where the partisans fell” and at the roots of the anti-fascism that made our Charter flourish, so that it the first applause of the Teatro Toselli and the Granda Province which had the terrible record of Nazi-fascist massacres: «If you want to go on pilgrimage, to the place where our Constitution was born, go to the mountains where the partisans fell, to the prisons where they were imprisoned, to the fields where they were hanged, wherever an Italian died, to redeem freedom and dignity: go there, young people, in thought, because our Constitution was born there”.

April 25, Liberation Day live

Thirteen claps, one standing ovation. «Bella ciao» jazzed on trumpet by Paolo Fresu. And in the front row the ministers Guido Crosetto, Daniela Santanché And Robert Calderoli, of a government that still struggles to say that little word. «He was very good», is the terse comment of the Tourism manager, who plays on home turf: «Bella ciao? And why should I be embarrassed? Instead, I am pleased that today the president has chosen my Cuneo…». Not surprisingly: Mattarella arrives in the city of the “firsts of the Resistance”, reminds him of the director of the Historical Institute, Sergio Soave – where the first massacre took place, but also from where a number of Jews left for the concentration camps second only to Rome and Trieste, not to mention the first forms of partisan struggle – the Head of State arrives on Corso Roma and immediately finds something to compliment a little girl with a tricolor headband, 10-year-old Clementina from Bernezzo, quick to give him a Constitution to autograph. Already the founding Charter: «the fruit of April 25 is our Constitution», the tenant of the Quirinale is clear, and indeed «April 25 is the feast of Italian identity, rediscovered and re-founded after fascism». Why “it is from the Resistance that the thrust comes to make the definitive choices», the courage to reject «the ambiguities that had allowed the distortion of the Albertine Statute brought about by fascism». It is in Cuneo “dei 12 thousand partisansof the two thousand killed in combat and of the 2,600 victims of the Nazi-fascist massacres” that “the Republic today celebrates its roots”.

Mattarella mentions them constantly, fascism and anti-fascism. Talk about Mussolini’s tyrannyand of the “heinous German and fascist oppression”, of the priests cut to pieces and of the civilians burned alive. And of the Constitution which was “the answer to the crisis of civilization produced by Nazi-fascism”: “Let’s ask ourselves where and how we would be, if Fascism and Nazism had prevailed then!”.

From Piazza Galimberti to the theatre, Cuneo is a mosaic of tombstones named after the partisans killed on the street. Mattarella chooses one, that of the town hall, not far from the ironic monument to Totò who “did the military” in a now liberated, pacified, lightened Cuneo in its regained freedom. It’s a darker, cautionary tombstone. It reads: «Dead and alive with the same commitment, a people gathered around the monument that is called now and always Resistance».

The president ends his speech exactly like this, with that motto that seems to come from distant yet very close revolts: now and always Resistance.