What will remain of those eighties? The story of the Magnificent Seven

That time Giorgio AmendolaNeapolitan leader and “meliorist” of the PCI, armed himself with authority with a very young man Antonio Bassolino, just 23 years old, and told him: “You have to stop being a worker…”. So he asked him the trick question about a variety of hazelnut that he of course didn’t know: «See? You have to go and be provincial secretary in Avellino!». No sooner said than done, he took the phone and communicated the news to the unaware “comrades” of the Irpinia federation. And so it was that the future mayor of Naples cut his teeth in the province, launching national solidarity in Avellino and, in some way, from the outside, a Christian Democratic ruling class that within a decade would be the absolute protagonist the national scene. In the refectory room of Palazzo San Macuto, the book by the journalist of the Rai radio newspaper is presented in Rome Daniele Morgera “They called them the magnificent seven”: Ciriaco, Gerardo and the others, truths and legends of the Irpinian DC that came to govern Italy, just released by La bussola editions. A story which, a bit like Bassolino, could only be told by a non-Irpinian, or by an acquired Irpinian, like Morgera, who, living in Ariano Irpino after having married an Arianese, wanted to spread a story which he came to know knowledge, which struck him as if he were struck by it. A beautiful story but one to be handled with care, because the value of friendship has a lot to do with it, which is also fundamental in politics, but which is not indissoluble or immutable over time. The narrative voice is imaginary, grandfather Generoso telling an equally imaginary woman granddaughter Alfonsina. The means of transport on which the narrator moves to the different countries of origin of the protagonists is also completely imaginary, a train defined as “high” speed, set in a province which has seen the railway lines that cross it relegated between the branches buckets. There are more than 7, in reality, these protagonists and the progenitor deserves a mention before anything else, Fiorentino Sullowho was a constituent, Minister of Education but who Maria Pia Garavaglia, as well as Bassolino, he recalls as Minister of Public Works for a seminal urban planning law from the early 1960s, although in reality it never became law, due to the very harsh opposition of the building lobby of the time, as he recalls Beppe Sangiorgi, historic spokesperson for Ciriaco De Mita, called to moderate the debate to remember a time when Nusco was “caput mundi” and, he jokes, “Naples was Avellino marittima”. Why Garavaglia? Because this story was born, in some way, in Milan and its Lombardy, at the Catholic University attended by the people of Irpinia Ciriaco De Mita And Gerardo Bianco and from Calabrian Riccardo Misasistruck by the Lombard founder of the Base movement Giovanni Marcora like the former Minister of Health and former president of the Red Cross. «The government in the North and the party in the South», was the thesis of Marcora, who, as a surveyor who had not been able to graduate in times of war, believed in culture and therefore in the connection between the economic interests of which the North was the bearer and the “vision” of which many men from the South were the bearers, many who came to study in the North.
But it is a story soon marked by painful ruptures. The one between Sullo and his young men, led by De Mita. The one between the former secretary of the DC himself and Gerardo Bianco. And that of Aristide Savignanoan intellectual of great prestige, future rector of the University of Salerno who at a certain point will decide to abandon the land of Irpinia and the political adventure to move to Tuscany. Because this “gang”, as Sangiorgi jokingly calls it, prefers “team” define it with respect Bassolino was born as a group of cultural commitment around the periodical Irpine Chronicles and then from there there are those who have given themselves body and soul to politics and those who have chosen cultural commitment or journalism. And there is the story between politics and journalism of Antonio Aurigemmasaid “Nacchettino” for a mysterious nickname given to him at birth by which he was known among all the big names in political journalism of the 1980s, who turned to him to decrypt the most hidden points of Demitian’s verb in the legendary DC congresses of the 1980s. Brother-in-law from Savignano for having married two sisters from Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi, Pia and Augusta Capone, who among other things tragically lost a brother in the rubble of the town which was the symbol of the 1980 earthquake. But before definitively choosing journalism (he was editor-in-chief and columnist of Morning) was also mayor of Avellino for 5 years, and Bassolino comes into play here because precisely in that five-year period (1970-1975) in which the former mayor of Naples and president of the Campania Region was secretary of the Irpinia federation, at the Municipality of Avellino an experiment of external support for the PCI was carried out, slightly in advance of the policy of national solidarity that would characterize the second half of the seventies. But certainly the best known of the journalists of that group is Biagio Agnesoriginally from Serino, one of the most long-lasting and esteemed general directors of Rai, able to stand up to the offensive that between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s came from the private networks and in particular from Fininvest of Silvio Berlusconi. Legendary, in Garavaglia’s story, De MIta’s truly ancient “repellence” towards the future leader of Forza Italia, which led him to lock himself in a room when he learned that the then young builder had arrived unexpectedly at a meeting , inventor of “Milano 2”.

But, of course, the “magnificent seven” are remembered above all by politicians. Salverino De Vitoof Bisaccia, a municipality of which he was mayor for a long time, minister of the South with Craxi, author of the law on youth entrepreneurship. Hortensio Zecchinothe youngest of the group and from Ariano like the author, who was Minister of the University in more recent times, a position from which he resigned to attempt the adventure, with Andreotti and D’Antoni of European Democracy.

Then Nicola Mancinofrom Montefalcione, former president of the Senate and Minister of the Interior who, in that group of politicians/journalists, little curiosity, had carved out the role of promising sports reporter.

And then Gerardo Bianco, from Guardia Dei Lombardi, legendary group leader of the Christian Democrat peons, who will become Gerry White at the helm of the Italian People’s Party, once the history of the DC is over. «A story interrupted by the courts», he says Peppino Garganiby Morra De Sanctis, another of the magnificent 7 (which if you count carefully, including Sullo, are practically 10), justice man first of the DC, then of Forza Italia, who organized the meeting as president of the association of former parliamentarians.

The parterre is full: the director of the Irpini Courierto Gianni Festathe former socialist exponent, who later moved to Forza Italia, Fabrizio Cicchitto; the senator is there Andrea Manzella; the former undersecretary Angelo Sanza, Pinella Aurigemma, daughter of “Nacchettino”, Lucrezia, Titti, and Simona Agnesdaughters of the former director of RAI and his widow, Rosella Valentinetti; the former president of the Cnr Lucius WhiteGerardo’s brother, the widow was also present Tina and the son Fazio Bianco; Chiara Mancinodaughter of the former president of the Senate; Gianfranco De Vitoson of the former minister; Nicola and Alessandra Savignano, sons of Aristides, the former senator of the CDU Maurizio Eufemi very close to Bianco like Gerardo Capozza, general secretary of the ACI; and then Stefano LuppiCEO of TvSat.

And there is too Antonia De Mitaeldest daughter of the undisputed leader, Ciriaco De Mita, the intellectual of Magna Graecia in the famous definition of Gianni Agnelli, halfway between the reverent and the irreverent, remembered in the afterword by Andrea Covotta, director of Rai Quirinale, Arianese and fellow countryman of the author. And the mind goes to a famous 3-3 between Avellino and Juventus, which saw Zoff come out in the middle of the second half to make room for the last match of the championship – it had never happened – to his unfortunate deputy Alessandrelli to give some glory to him too, and instead it will prove to be a disgrace that is difficult to shake off. The blue goalkeeper has always excluded, in his exit from the field, a desire for favors of any kind to the favorite team of the future secretary of the DC, who on that occasion, moreover, was in the stands, and if he says so, it is believe him. But the urban legend sees in its filigree the looming of the two most powerful figures of the 80s, the number one of Fiat and the leader of the DC, even if it was still May 13, 1979, and De Mita was still deputy secretary of the DC, and he would become secretary three years later. But as we know, once urban legends become established they are difficult to eradicate.

“Nostalgia? Politics is not done with nostalgia, but it is an element of it,” he says Pier Ferdinando Casini. Has politics changed for the worse in the meantime? “I’m not saying it, because when I was young I hated those who supported it, and I don’t want to fall for it too,” he cuts short. But you understand that he thinks so a little.