On December 15, 1969, journalists, neighbors and police crowded into the office of Commissioner Luigi Calabresi. The anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, who was being questioned that day, had fallen from his window, located on the fourth floor. He was accused of having participated days earlier in a bomb attack in Milan’s Piazza Fontana. The agent proved his innocence before the authorities. He had an alibi: he was not at the police headquarters. But that’s all he said. On this day, they swore revenge.
Three years later, on the morning of May 17, 1972, he was shot and killed by members of the far-left organization Lotta Continua. His death altered the course of political events and changed the history of the country, which entered one of its darkest periods, the years of lead.
One of his sons, Mario Calabresi, former director of the newspapers La Stampa and La Repubblica, captures the cruelty of this time in Salir de la noche, a book he dedicated to his father and the victims of terrorism and which is now available in bookstores in Spanish.
“All my life I have been gathering information about my father’s murder. I knew that if one day I was inspired to write a book, it would be about this. Not many talk about the victims and their scars. When this volume was published in Italy, it was the first with this approach. I found it revealing, as well as surprising. Its publication encouraged the emergence of others, but there are still very few”, the journalist explained to La Vanguardia during his visit to Barcelona.
In its pages, it investigates the case of its father and explains the harassment to which it was subjected. “People say that fake news is internet stuff. I laugh every time I hear it. My father suffered one of the most powerful disinformation campaigns that can be remembered in Italy, which led to his death”, he regrets.
Although over time information on the case has been provided, two issues were important both for Calabresi and his family: “Showing the world that my father was not responsible for the death of the anarchist Pinelli and knowing who killed my father Both things have been resolved and, for this reason, I consider that justice has been done”, he affirms flatly, despite the fact that one of those involved, Ovidio Bompressi, was pardoned years later. “Justice is not a private or family matter, but of the State and the institutions. Pardons are fair as long as society demands them. But before this process, it is essential that there is truth, justice and attention to the victims. Without this, then the pardon becomes an unjust and painful event”, he says.
The need to understand the why of things led Calabresi not only to choose the profession he practices, but also to meet in person with Giorgio Pietrostefani, the organizer of the murder. “He managed to escape to France and has been living there for more than twenty years. I found out that he was very sick and before he died I wanted to solve all my doubts. He accepted, as long as he went there as a son and not as a journalist. I promised him I wouldn’t record anything and so it was. I just wanted to feel something like peace for once.”
Despite what he has been through, the journalist tries to emphasize the “fundamental lesson” that his mother leaves them as a legacy: to educate them away from hatred. “He taught us from a young age that we would not gain anything with revenge, as it would destroy our lives. And we were already very destroyed to add more pain.”
Can you turn the page? “Everyone goes through a different grief, but, broadly speaking, yes, as long as justice is done. My mother had to take a different path, that of forgiveness. It is a long task that, in his case, ended with the awarding of the Valor medal given to him a few years ago by the then President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. For the first time she felt that the State had not forgotten her husband or her”, says Calabresi, who does not want anyone to go through the same thing as them and so many other victims. “The political debate has reignited with the extreme right on the board, this is evidence. There are more and more protests in universities and schools, but it doesn’t stop there. I want to think that, from those very raw times, we all learned something. I hope to continue thinking this and not be disappointed”, he concludes.
