“The friend who works miracles with a screwdriver in his hand, a life, many lives, all wonderful, but most of all the incredible adventure of the Cuckoo’s Nest that we shared with Valerio, an unlikely, dreamlike, almost legendary boat, a breath on the sea”. This is how the publisher Danilo Montanari remembers Giorgio Benelli, who passed away on Monday at the age of 81. He was ill and had been hospitalized for a few days. They had been friends all their lives, ever since they met at the Bar Mosaico in 1969. The boat was the one they had built together, their other great friend, Valerio Ravaioli, was also there. It was a jumble of unlikely pieces, picked up here and there and the first time it went into the water it was all crooked, after all none of the three were sea experts. But he had taken them far, even if not always where they had planned: once they had taken the wrong route, they were headed for Lussino and found themselves in Pula.
Giorgio Benelli was a technician and had worked in the analysis laboratory of the Province. But above all he was a man with many great passions. Starting from the politics that led him to be among the founders of the Ravenna branch of Lotta Continua in the Seventies. With Valerio Ravaioli, in addition to the sea, in the 1980s he shared the birth of a place in the Marina pine forest which has become legend in Ravenna: La Regina d’Africa. Together with them there were Mauro Zanarini, Walter Pretolani and Domenico Berardi.
He was a great traveler and photographer, a convinced environmentalist who carried out numerous battles to protect Ravenna and its territory. First of all the one that at the beginning of the 2000s led to the formation of the La Duna Viva committee, to protect the stretch of beach in Marina di Ravenna in front of the colony where they wanted to build a bathing establishment. And it was thanks to the protests and the mobilization of the movement that the project was later abandoned. Giorgio Benelli was among the first to take aerial photos of Ravenna with the drone, even before he had used the hang glider to create a mapping of the entire territory. He had also been at the forefront of the protest against the construction of an underground island in the space overlooking Via di Roma close to Piazza Anita Garibaldi. But there he had had less luck. Over the years he has been the protagonist of campaigns at a local level, for example in defense of the wetlands of Ravenna, and nationally, such as the one on water as a public good. A memory also comes from another friend, Marcello Landi, with whom Benelli shared discussions and chats since the days of Bar Mosaico. “In recent years – says Landi – we often met at the bar, it was no longer the Mosaico, but we called it our ‘office’, we talked, we exchanged ideas. We were a small group of very loyal people, Nino Carnoli was always there too “. Giorgio Benelli was always kind, never rude and rarely raised his voice, but always determined in his beliefs.
He leaves behind his partner Monica and his daughter Irene. The funeral will be held at the mortuary at 4.45pm with departure for the Ravenna cemetery.
Annamaria Corrado
