Giovanni Guareschi

Exactly fifty years ago, il 22 July 1968, Giovanni Guareschi died, writer, journalist, screenwriter, political polemicist, agricultural entrepreneur and much more. I can't help but remember him for the warmth he was able to instill in our hearts with his stories that talk about places, Emilia, and of an era, after the Second World War, who are still very close to us. This climate also allows us to revisit the periodic re-showing of films on TV Don Camillo, on whom Guareschi wrote this curious reflection «Gino Cervi corresponds exactly to my Peppone. Fernandel doesn't have the slightest resemblance to my Don Camillo. But he's so good that he stole the job from my priest. So now, when I venture into some new Don Camillo story, I find myself in serious difficulty because I have to employ a priest who has the face of Fernandel.»

Baldassarre Molossi wrote, in the Gazzetta di Parma" of 25 July 1968: “Giovannino Guareschi is the most read Italian writer in the world with translations into all languages ​​and staggering circulation figures. But official Italy ignored him. Many of our current rulers owe something to Guareschi and his strenuous battle of 1948 if today they still sit in ministerial chairs, but none of them moved. None of them showed up (…). Even Giovannino Guareschi now rests in the gentleman's cemetery. It is an uncrowded place. We understood it yesterday, while we counted old friends from our youth and some journalists among us, on the fingers of both hands.”