The Italian political cartoonist Giorgio Forattini always depicted Giovanni Spadolini, the first non-Christian Democrat prime minister in the history of the Italian Republic, as an impish, corpulent cupid, gradually making him more and more naked as his political powers increased. But Spadolini was not just a politician. He was also historian and journalist.
Born in Florence on June 21, 1925, the son of a well-off painter of the macchiaioli school, Spadolini grew up surrounded by books at the family’s home at via Cavour 28. Deeply interested in the Risorgimento, or the ‘Resurgence’, the period of Italy’s unification, Spadolini began publishing on the subject soon after his graduation in law from the University of Florence. This led to his appointment as a lecturer and then professor in modern history at the Faculty of Political Science of his alma mater.
By 1950, Spadolini combined teaching with contributing articles to national newspapers and magazines like Il Messaggero and Epoca. He was so good at it that, in 1955, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Bologna-based paper, Il Resto del Carlino. He remained there until 1968 when he took up the same job at Italy’s leading daily, Corriere della Sera, in Milan.
Differences of opinion with the Cresti family who owned Corriere led to Spadolini’s dismissal in 1972. This seemingly unpropitious event, however, opened the doors to a new phase in his life-an impressive political career. On the invitation of Ugo La Malfa, leader of the Republican Party (PRI), a small, non-Marxist, left-of-centre party that mediated when dialogue between Italy’s two main parties, the Christian Democrat Party (DC) and the Communist Party (PCI) was strained, he stood in the 1972 elections and was elected in the PRI’s list as an independent senator. From then on, his political ascent was inexorable. By 1973, he became the first minister for Cultural and Environmental Heritage, and in 1979, he was nominated minister of Education. After La Malfa’s death that same year, he was elected Secretary of his party, a post he held until he became speaker of the Senate.
This intellectual bachelor who loved good conversation and fine food first became prime minister on June 28, 1981, leading a five-party coalition of Christian Democrats, Socialists, Social Democrats, Liberals and Republicans. Due to an internal crisis within the coalition, this experience abruptly ended on August 23, 1982. Called upon once again to form another government, he again became prime minister, serving until December 1, 1982. During his two mandates, he faced difficult times that included the kidnapping of James Lee Dozier, an American general, by the Red Brigades; the assassination of Pio La Torre, a leading Communist politician, by the Mafia in Sicily; and the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano, resulting in investigations into P-2, the deviant Masonic lodge suspected of conspiracy.
In the subsequent two Craxi governments between 1983 and 1987, Spadolini, as minister of Defence, had to deal, in 1985, with the ‘Sigonella crisis’. This involved terrorists of the Palestine Liberation Front who had highjacked the Achille Lauro, provoking a serious diplomatic confrontation between Italy and the United States. Between 1987 and 1994, he became speaker of the Senate and, in 1991, was nominated a life senator. Unscathed by the Tangentopli (‘Bribesville’) scandal because of his high moral rectitude and honesty, he nonetheless failed by one vote to be re-elected speaker of the upper house in 1994. However, in recognition for his services, the Senate library was named after him in 2003
Although absorbed by political life, he still found time to write over 60 works mainly dedicated to contemporary Italian history but also including a brief history of Florence; to act, from 1976 until his death, as president of the board of the Bocconi University in Milan; to create, in 1980, the prestigious Fondazione Nuova Antologia; and to become, in 1990, president of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, founded by Benedetto Croce.
On August 4, 1994, Spadolini died at age 69, in Rome, of complications after stomach surgery. Amid some consternation (he had professed to be an atheist), his funeral was celebrated in Rome at the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Buried in Florence at the Porte Sante cemetery of the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte, his tombstone simply bears a copy of his signature with the words ‘un italiano’ written underneath-the same words found on the grave of Giuseppe Mazzini, one of his principal role models.
My wish for when I am no longer here, is to see the rooms of my house in Pian dei Giullari filled with young people studying the papers and books that I collected during my lifetime. Assisted by a university more open than the one we created and illuminated by a love for Italy greater than the one we were able to give them. After my death, I want the house to remain the ‘house of books’. Everything must remain as it is at the top of that knoll of ancient cypress trees-the periodicals library, the books and the collections, at the service of new generations of students. -Giovanni Spadolini.
After his death, Spadolini’s Pian di Giullari home became the offices for the Fondazione Nuova Antologia. Its library is open to the public Monday to Thursday, 9:30am to 5pm.
