«Maybe I, at the time, would have died on the wrong side but today I am happy that someone, unfortunately, died to remind me that there is a right side and a wrong side. And the right one is freedom.” The mayor of Terni, Stefano Bandecchi, said this before taking part in the celebrations for April 25th. For Bandecchi, the people who still today struggle to define themselves as anti-fascists “are fascists and still – he continues – have not read the fascist statute”. «I keep repeating – underlines the mayor of Terni – that people must understand things. I think that all dead people are the same after death.” According to the mayor «the values of the resistance are extremely current and always valid. They can’t change for smart people. Then you can say that 70 years have passed but they are still valid.” For this reason, April 25 «allows us today to be able to be here to speak, to be able to have an opposition and a majority, to go and vote without having someone in the ballot box who arrives and offers you a coffee. What allows us to be in democracy and autonomous. It remains an important date and perhaps if all of us remembered it more carefully, so many wars in the world would not break out and so much violence would not be normal”, concludes Bandecchi.
Cover photo: ANSA/FABIO TONI
