Before launching into the political arena, Silvio Berlusconi was already thinking about death. In 1990 he designed his own tomb in his mansion in Arcore, on the outskirts of Milan. He commissioned the well-known sculptor Pietro Cascella to build a monumental mausoleum made of Carrara marble, inspired by the tomb of Tutankhamun or Emperor Hadrian. He had a central place for himself, and about thirty spaces for his closest collaborators, friends and relatives, whom he tempted, with the honor of being buried in his own home. “Don’t do something mortuary to me”, he asked Cascella.
Yesterday, at 10.40 a.m., the presenters of Mediaset’s Canale 5 broadcast with tears in their eyes a news that ends an era in Italy. Who was Italian prime minister three times, television and football magnate and protagonist of Italy’s most scandalous scandals died at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan from complications arising from chronic myelomonocytic leukemia that was diagnosed more than ‘a year and that spread in April, when he spent 12 days in prison. On Friday he returned to the same hospital, where he finally lost his life at the age of 86.
The body was immediately transferred to be watched over privately by the family and their collaborators in their villa in Arcore, on the outskirts of Milan, while the state funeral will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, at three o’clock in the afternoon, at the Milan Duomo with the presence of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, and the Prime Minister, waiting to know if international representatives will be there. Everyone reacted, starting with his old friend Vladimir Putin, who defined him as a “patriot” and a “magnificent person”.
Born in 1936 into a middle-class Milanese family, Berlusconi’s first job was selling electrical appliances to pay for his Law studies. The gift of people, which accompanied him until the end of his days, also enabled him to embark on cruises and dedicate himself to singing and encouraging the passengers. One of his first outlandish ideas was, in the 1960s, to build the unique Milano Due real estate project, a place where some 2,700 families still live on the outskirts of Milan with all the basic services and even an artificial lake with swans .
The neighborhood was the site of the headquarters of the first Italian private television, TeleMilano 58, which began broadcasting in 1974. Through its network came Canale 5, the first private channel of national reach , which brought the revolution to the small screen with the Mediaset empire. With his private channels he ended the monopoly of public television Rai, and later culminated his business project with the acquisition of the publishing group Mondadori and the football club Milan AC, which he added to the conglomerate Fininvest. They say that one of the most painful moments of his life was when he had to give in and break away from Milan in 2017. His new football toy was Monza, a small team that managed to get promoted to Serie A.
Having achieved success in business, Berlusconi decided to launch into politics with the same advertising techniques that had filled his pockets.
He broke into Italy, troubled by the Mans Netes process, a gigantic corruption scandal that put an end to Christian democracy and the order known in the media as the First Republic. He won the election in 1994 and, although his first term was short, he repeated between 2001 and 2006 and 2008 and 2011. His judicial scandals and the bacchanals he organized with underage girls – he preferred to call them “elegant dinners” – at his residences in Rome, Milan and Sardinia they ended up in all the newspapers, but what sank his last term was the scourge of the economic crisis and the loss of confidence of its European partners. His governments were a democratic oddity (a businessman and a powerful executive at the same time) that other billionaires eager to try their luck in politics later imitated, starting with Donald Trump. Always with strong popularity data, despite its accumulation of negative headlines and with liberal promises to lower taxes and fight against illegal immigration. He was also the first to open the doors to power for the ultra-right, and agreed without hesitation with the then Northern League and National Alliance, predecessor of the current Brothers of Italy.
Not even disqualified for tax fraud, expelled from power by the pressure of the markets, investigated for his businesses or ridiculed for the bunga bunga sex parties did he agree to pass on the testimony to the new generations. During the last few years he was still plotting political tricks so that his party, Forza Italia, would continue to be indispensable in the parliamentary arch. In October, he managed to return to the Senate, nine years after being expelled, and form the current government coalition that governs Italy, although reluctantly to be led by Giorgia Meloni, his former pupil.
He was in trouble until the last minute for his incendiary statements in which he blamed Volodymyr Zelensky for the war in Ukraine and defended Putin, with whom he was going on holiday. He died without realizing the last of his dreams: to become president of the Republic. Also without designating a clear heir for the party, which has suffered significant losses in recent years. One of the big questions now is whether Forza Italia will survive its leader or whether it will implode and its members will be split between the various right-wing formations that exist. Matteo Salvini has been trying to unite this space for some time. Many will opt for Brothers of Italy, and others are already beginning to be tempted by the centrist space represented by Matteo Renzi and ex-minister Carlo Calenda. His last partner, 33-year-old deputy Marta Fascina, who has lately been the bridge between Arcore and the world, has a lot to say.
Berlusconi, with a drive towards immortality manifested in his cosmetic operations, hair transplants or recurring make-up, jokingly said that thanks to medical advances he would live to be 120 years old.
In recent years, the dominance of young far-right leaders, such as Salvini or Meloni, showed how much he had aged. Leukemia has finally put an end to what many people consider to be the inventor of populism in the European political laboratory.
