Ah, Sandro Pertini, the president of the republic most loved by Italians. The people's president, of children, the cartoon with the pipe, the partisan president who abandons the protocol. The Impertinent. The Pure. Forty years after his election to the Quirinale, in a celebratory deluge, A hagiographic film about him will be released tomorrow at the cinema. We would like to integrate the holy card by telling the story of the other Pertini.
Upon Stalin's death in 1953, comrade Pertini, former pro-Soviet director of Avanti! and at the time the leader of the socialist group celebrated the dictator in Parliament. Here's what he said in Avanti!: «Comrade Stalin ended his day well, even if too early for us and for the fate of the world. His last word was peace. (…) One is amazed by the size of this figure… Men of every creed, friends and adversaries, must today recognize the immense stature of Joseph Stalin. He is a giant of history and his memory will never fade.". That praise, never retracted by Pertini, not even after all Stalin's crimes became known, it does not honor a fighter for freedom and the rights of peoples.

As President of the Republic, comrade Pertini conceded as soon as he was elected, pardon to the executioner of Porzus, the former communist partisan Mario Toffanin, called “Jacket”, despite the fact that he had never repented of his crimes for which he had been sentenced to life imprisonment. Toffanin was responsible for the Porzus massacre, February 1945: due to a false accusation of espionage, they were shot well 17 Catholic and socialist partisans (the “Osoppo Brigade”), by communist partisans (Gap). Among them, Pasolini's brother was murdered, Guido. After Pertini's pardon of Toffanin, the Italian State also granted the unrepentant criminal the pension he enjoyed for twenty years, together with other 30 thousand Slovenians and Croatians "rewarded" by the Italian state for their anti-Italian persecutions. Pertini then emotionally participated in the funeral of the Yugoslav president Tito (1980), the first person responsible for the sinkholes, kissing that flag which aroused terrible memories in the Istrian exiles, Julians and Dalmatians.
Pertini was a ruthless partisan leader. His name recurs in many events. For example, that of the acting couple Valenti-Ferida. Luisa Ferida Aveva 31 years old and was pregnant with a child when she was killed by partisans at the San Siro Hippodrome in Milan together with Osvaldo Valenti, il 30 April 1945, accused of collaborationism, for having frequented the infamous Villa Triste, in Milan, headquarters of the Koch gang. The accusation proved unfounded after examination of evidence and testimonies; Vero Marozin himself, leader of the partisan brigade that carried out their death sentence, he declared, during the criminal proceedings against him: «Ferida hadn't done anything, really nothing". The two actors, Indeed, they paid for their lives with luxuries and cocaine but had no criminal or political responsibilities that would justify their shooting for collaboration. In the statements made by Marozin during the trial, Pertini was indicated as the one who had given the order to kill them: «That day – 30 April 1945 – Pertini called me three times telling me: “Shoot them, and don't waste time!”». See in this regard «Partisan Odyssey» by Vero Marozin (1966), «Luisa Ferida, Osvaldo Valenti, Rise and fall of two movie stars" by Odoardo Reggiani (Spiral 2001). «Pertini had refused to read the defense memorandum that Valenti had drawn up during the days of imprisonment, which contained the names of the witnesses who could have cleared the two actors of any accusation. The Milanese home of Valenti and Ferida was burgled a few days after their killing. A real treasure was stolen (purebred dogs included) of which every trace was lost".
The episode that happened in the archbishopric of Milan in 1945 is famous, when Pertini met Mussolini on the stairs, fresh from a conversation with Cardinal Schuster. Pertini later said he didn't recognize him, «otherwise I would have shot him down there, with revolver shots". Then he added: "like a mangy dog". Pertini supported the need to kill Mussolini, don't arrest him: if he had been saved, these, maybe he would have even been elected to Parliament. Of Pertini's responsibilities in the Via Rasella massacre in Rome, William Maglietto wrote about it in «Pertini Sì, Pertini no" (Seventh Seal, 1990).
At the Quirinale, beyond the good-natured image of the president cheering for the National team, play cards, goes to Vermicino for Alfredino, the child who fell into the well, we remember his touchy character. For example when he fired his press office chief, Antonio Ghirelli, valiant journalist and socialist gentleman. Or when he asked to fire Massimo Fini from Rizzoli following an article about him that he didn't like. This is how Fini himself spoke about it: «Immediate angry phone call to the director of Corriere Sunday Pierluigi Magnaschi, a gentleman of information, who, covered in an avalanche of insults, tries to get by by alluding to the autonomy of journalists' columns, to the somewhat contrary spirit of Massimo Fini. Il “our” San Pertini barks at him menacingly: “Don't think you're being smart with me, imbecile! I'll call your master Agnelli and let's see who's in charge here!”. And in fact the next day the editorial manager of the publishing house Lamberto Sechi introduced himself to me...". Pertini himself told Livio Zanetti in a book-interview: «I tried in vain to get a strange Italian-American journalist fired». In his diaries, Nenni considered Pertini to be violently irascible.
When the MSI celebrated its congress in Genoa in 1960, It was Pertini himself who lit the fire of the bloody revolt of the CGIL dockworkers with the "brichettu" speech (the match). And the infamous "Genoa hooks" came, with which a centre-right democratic government, the Tambroni guide, with the external support of the MSI, it was brought down by a violent insurrection in the name of anti-fascism.
His vanity was then proverbial. Ghirelli reported a scathing judgment from Saragat: «Sandro is a hero, especially if there is television". And his designer clothes, his Gucci shoes while preaching socialism and pauperism… Many rumors then flourished about him, partisan leader and then socialist leader I'll spare you, judgments from the ANPI were circulating, by Marco Ramperti… Francesco Damato remembered: "In the 1973 Pertini informed me that he had just kicked out his party secretary from his office as president of the Chamber, Francesco De Martino. Who had come to him to propose that he resign to make room for Moro, in exchange for the laticlavius ​​upon the death of the first senator for life". Then it was precisely the emotional wave of the Moro assassination and the DC-PCI axis on non-negotiation that led to his election two months later at the Quirinale.
Finally, Pertini should be remembered for the workers of Marghera, in the midst of the raging of red terrorism with large trails of blood, these: “I was a red brigadier too” and then denied that the Red Brigades were red, judging them only "brigands", so as to sever the red thread between BR and partisans. The President of a Republic plagued in those years by red terrorism, he proudly defined himself as "a Red Brigade member".