While around eighty militants of “Legnano does not forget” marched in procession from via Gilardelli to the square in front of the Galilei high school named after Carlo Borsani to remember Borsani himself and Arturo Sesler, the memory of the soldier also marked the opening of the council session on Tuesday 30 Aprilbringing back current issues touched upon only a few days earlier by the mayor Lorenzo Radice in the square, during the celebrations for the 79th anniversary of the Liberation.
Borsani was remembered on the benches of the city council by Stefano Carvelli, advisor to the Brothers of Italy, who underlined how many “don’t know who he is or know him only partially”. After tracing its profile, he asked himself how the city would like to remember Carlo Borsani from Legnano: «As one of the many fascists who died during the Second World War or as a gold medal for military valor, a journalist, a poet and above all a person who put the safety of others before his own life, lost as no man should lose it? «It is not a simple answer – added Carvelli -, but if we have to contribute to the pacification of our territory and to a shared memory of our country, it is an answer that sooner or later we will be called to give and that we cannot make mistakes, and in this way we would perhaps avoid unpleasant episodes such as protests against the ANPI offices or the prime minister. 79 years have passed, we must all try to look forward and think more about our community and not about our political opponent».
«The theme of the memory of the years of the fascist dictatorship and the war is a starting point for moving forward: 79 years have passed and I hope in a future where our national and local community sees each other again without divisions in what was the fruit of the Resistance, or the Constitution – is the reply received by Dem secretary Giacomo Pigni -. I think that social pact effect of the Resistance in this historical moment is weakening. I call it a social pact because, exactly like the Resistance, it was the result of a political meeting between very different forces, united for a free nation and against an ideology that has brought injustice and death in our country and we cannot compromise on this. I find it difficult to answer Councilor Carvelli’s question, I don’t want to set myself up as a judge of a person’s existence, but I can say that every public occasion should be useful for all of us to affirm that the starting point of our community must be contained in the Constitution, a Constitution that is anti-fascist in every letter».
Words, those of Pigni, which found support both in the group leader of Insieme per Legnano Eligio Bonfrate, and he cited article 12 of the transitional and final provisions of the Constitution and the ban on «reorganization, in any form, of the dissolved fascist party», underlining that if the law has «never been touched by anyone it is because something probably needs to be left as a bulwark», and in the PD group leader Sara Borgio. Quoting Calvino and not without causing some murmurs among the (little) audience present in the council chamber, Borgio reiterated that «Legnano is anti-fascist like all of Italy: anti-fascist because he believes in human freedom, in the equality of human beings, in respect for human dignity; anti-fascist because it rejects the shortcut of absolute power in the hands of a single man, woman or power group; anti-fascist because it repudiates war and violence as tools for the management and affirmation of power; anti-fascist because our Constitution is anti-fascist».
From the benches of the League, however, came the appeal to turn the page. «After hearing the majority councilors speak once again about anti-fascism, that is, about something that has no longer existed for 79 years and which we continue to talk about as if it were absolutely current while actually hunting ghosts, I would feel like say that we should declare ourselves anti-fascists but also anti-communists – the words of Laffusa -: not only fascism, which I absolutely deny and abhor for all the harm it has done to human beings, but also communism which unfortunately still exists unlike fascism and which is still doing a lot of damage around the world. I would say for the sake of equal conditions to avoid bringing these up again topics, which in my opinion are highly anachronistic because we are chasing a past that has no longer existed for decadesand to move forward and open ourselves to a new era that has already begun a long time ago.”
