It is his daughter Bianca who announces it: «Dad’s grave was vandalized». Again: because it is the second time in the space of a month that the tomb of the historic PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer, at the Flaminio cemetery, has been damaged. Yet «in the forty years since dad’s death, his tomb has always been full of flowers brought by many people who stopped for a thought and a tribute – recalls Bianca Berlinguer – And this has always been a great comfort for us children ». Instead «in the last month the grave was vandalized twice by someone (one or more people): vases destroyed, flowers thrown away and flowerbeds trampled. A cowardly and ignoble act.”
The same words that the secretary uses Pd Elly Schlein, condemning the gesture and underlining: «It motivates us even more to carry on his memory, 40 years after his death». Marco Pacciotti, member of the PD national leadership, says he is “astonished”: “I am sure that, in the coming weeks, the celebrations of the anniversary of the unforgettable secretary of the PCI, all those who committed this ignoble act will be silenced, probably encouraged by a climate of impunity which we hope will be denied by those who govern today”, he concludes. The Anpi, the partisan association, believes that this is a “sign of the dark times we are going through”. «I am disgusted and offended by the outrage – says President Gianfranco Pagliarulo – Enrico has represented for more than a generation an icon of anti-fascism and a symbol of the possibility of a better, freer and more equal Italy. The disfigurement of his memory strengthens us even more in the battle against any authoritarian drift. My full solidarity and that of the entire Anpi goes to his family.”
The president of the Senate also spoke on the matter Ignazio La Russa: «Vandalizing a tomb is one of the most cowardly and shameful acts that can be done and which qualifies those who perpetrate it. My sincere sympathy goes to Bianca and the entire Berlinguer family.”
Under Berlinguer’s leadership, the communist party overtook the Christian Democrats for the first (and only) time in the 1984 elections: it was also the effect of the general emotion that hit the country after his death on 11 June of the same year during a stroke rally.
