Conclusion

Abstract

As I write this conclusion, Italy is celebrating the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the unification. In the city of Reggio Emilia, where the tricolor flag was invented, there are banners and posters everywhere inviting citizens to participate in the many forthcoming events. In Ravenna, Senator Sergio Zavoli, in a speech given in the presence of the Italian president, has just commemorated the exemplary contributions of Arrigo Boldrini and Benigno Zaccagnini to the democratic life of the Republic. Boldrini, the president of the ANPI for decades, was a communist, while Zaccagnini was himself a partisan, a leading figure in Christian Democracy, and the secretary of the DC at the time of the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro. When he died in 1989, Boldrini gave his funeral oration. These two individuals are, the message is clear, symbolic of the unity of Italy. It could, of course, be objected that bringing together Zaccagnini and Boldrini in this way is, perhaps, a little forced. But that is not the point. Italy is currently going through another examination of its history, through the prism of a political situation that is characterised in some quarters by a desire for a federal state. History and politics are, as this book has tried to show, inextricably linked. And that is why Zaccagnini and Boldrini are themselves linked. The reason the past “matters” in Italy is that politics count—very much.

Italy must be amongst the most historically sensitive countries in the world. The past matters here, sometimes very much.¹

—Paul Ginsborg