L’AQUILA – Known simply as “the little circle” it was for decades a tough section of the PCI in the center of L’Aquila and then went through the whole epic of the PDS and the DS. It only surrendered to the 2009 earthquake but the long-awaited renovation works will begin shortly in the area where the small but characteristic building is located in via Minucuccio d’Ugolino. A piece of the L’Aquila left took advantage of it for an ideal greeting with the hope of making it an open place once again for political elaboration in the future.
From the 1950s onwards it had been the headquarters of the Piero Ventura section of the PCI. It is no coincidence because the club was born on the initiative of a group composed mostly of craftsmen and artisans who were also the founders of the original party, led in L’Aquila by Ventura, the most important of the L’Aquila communists – who also ended up in exile together to Antonio Gramsci – along with that Sergio Amadesi who was personal secretary of Palmiro Togliatti.
At the end of the PCI era, a space was created in the small club for the Gramsci section some political formations took up the baton. Finally, with the birth of the Democratic Party, he remained alone the circle as a place of aggregation and often animated by the historic dinners that even the youngest and university students of the UDU held there.
From 91, the year of Bolognina but also of the purchase of the club, and up to the donation to the Abruzzo Riforme foundation, there had been some historic exponents of the PCI, Federico Brini, Alvaro Iovannitti and Vittorio Agnelli, to protect its existence. The only one still alive, Agnelli, at 99 years of age, did not want to miss the reunion where, among photos, anecdotes, memories of the characters who passed through the club, such as Gianni Minà, the “comrades” who animated his life were remembered of the club for decades.
“A meet and greet” he explained Fulvio Angelini president of the Anpi and member of the steering council of the Abruzzo Reform Foundationfounded in 2007 right in the midst of the birth of the Democratic Party, to collect the real estate assets and historical documentation of the provincial federations and the regional committee, as well as the personal files of leaders and militants of the PCI, PDS and DS
The works will begin in the next few months and the aim is to make it an open headquarters for the foundation, where the political experience of the L’Aquila workers’ movement will be remembered.
