Double Celebration in Aprilia: Liberation Day and the Anniversary of the Foundation of the city

The municipal administration of Aprilia celebrates the 79th anniversary of the Liberation Day from Nazi-Fascism and the 88th anniversary of the foundation of the city. In fact, this morning the ceremony was held for this double celebration that has always accompanied the second city of the province of Latina, the event started with the gathering of the combat and arms associations in Piazza Roma and the Holy Mass celebrated at 10 am in the church of San Michele Arcangelo, at 11 am the institutional procession started from Piazza Roma along Via degli Aranci to reach the war memorial in Piazza della Repubblica, where a wreath of flowers was laid.

Then space was given to the speech by the mayor of Aprilia Lanfranco Principi who underlined the importance of the liberation of Italy from Nazi-fascism and by the president of the Anpi of Aprilia section Vittorio Arrigoni, Filippo Fasano, who in his speech underlined the importance of this day also recalling the figure of Giacomo Matteotti, a socialist anti-fascist for whom this year marks the centenary of his murder. To close the event there was a performance by the Bersaglieri Fanfare in Piazza Roma.

“I extend a greeting and a warm welcome to all the people who have chosen to participate in this ceremony today to commemorate the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Italy from Nazi-fascism. It is a highly symbolic date for Aprilia, founded on 25 April 1936 with the ritual of the Roman furrow dug into the earth, corresponding – said the mayor Lanfranco Principi in his speech – to the point where Piazza Roma stands today. This day, which links local history and an important page in the history of our country, is characterized by the positive values ​​of the idea of ​​birth, of the creative force opposed to destruction and death: the birth of our city from unhealthy lands rescued from malaria by our pioneers, but also the rebirth of our republican state, democratic and free from the ashes and ruins left by a fratricidal war. War fell on Aprilia like a bolt from the blue, the day after the Anzio landing. The Allied advance towards the capital to liberate Rome from the occupying forces caused the death of thousands of soldiers and civilians, and the flight of as many people forced to leave the places that had become their home for just 8 years, to escape the devastation of their still young city. A bloody war that sowed death and destruction, but which proved to be a necessary sacrifice so that the end of a totalitarian regime corresponded to the triumph of the ideals of freedom, social justice and democracy. “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes a duty,” says a maxim by Bertolt Brecht. And in fact for our Italy the Resistance has meant a collective awareness, led by free, anti-fascist and democratic forces, underlying profoundly different ideologies but united to break the chains of an unjust regime, which has shown its face worse through the physical elimination or forced removal of political opponents, the suppression of freedom of vote and opinion, through racial laws. A regime that dragged Italy into a world conflict taking the side of believed it was right to invade free countries, without taking into account the principles proposed in Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, which laid the foundations for the creation of the League of Nations, with the aim of settle disputes between states in the bud and guarantee peace. After 79 years, April 25th represents the moment in which we can gather and reflect on the importance of still celebrating the values ​​of the Resistance today, supported by political forces that made up the National Liberation Committee, heterogeneous but united by anti-fascism. Those values ​​are the very foundation of our Constitution, supported by the ideals of freedom and democracy.

It is within that document that the fundamental rights of the citizen as an individual and within the social context, his duties, the rules that govern the social and political relations of a civil society are recalled. In drafting the text, the founding fathers were able to give substance to the ideal according to which national pacification should start again to found a new order, based on the collective good and popular sovereignty, as opposed to an order that concentrated power in hands of a few, limiting political freedoms and above all the personal freedom of men and women.
The founding fathers had the arduous task of rewriting the rules underlying the functioning of democratic bodies which had failed 20 years earlier and which underwent a profound transformation after 2 June 1946, with the victory of the supporters of the Republic in the Referendum. They forcefully wanted to reiterate the pre-eminence of popular sovereignty, secrecy and freedom to vote and opinion, to guarantee all citizens personal freedom without any limitation, to condemn physical or moral violence as a means of coercion. Because freedom, the most precious asset available to human beings, represents an inalienable, certain and solid asset for ours and for the new generations, but April 25th comes back every year to remind us that our freedom is an achieved asset. at great cost, a precious legacy that many young men and women, to whom we want to pay homage today, have given us by supporting this ideal until their death. An asset that these martyrs of democracy wanted to entrust to us with the task of safeguarding it, to guarantee lasting peace between people, between peoples, between nations. While international tensions make peace a chimera and war rages again with outbreaks scattered across many parts of the world, sowing death and devastation again and again, we are here together to convey our message of peace, so that our children can treasure it, aware that peace is rooted in the DNA of our country, which flows through the words of our Constitutional Charter.
“Italy – it states – repudiates war as an instrument of attack on the freedom of other peoples and as a means of resolving international disputes”. We must treasure this principle every day. We have a moral duty to spread it in schools, to teach young people that the sacrifice made 79 years ago by those who gave their lives for our country had the sole purpose of seeing democracy, freedom and peace flourish”.