Perugia, 7 June 2024 – Dozens of red and white flags are waving, the colors of Perugia which Vittoria Ferdinandi he ‘adopted’ for his countryside electoral. At 6.30pm Piazza IV Novembre is already full, the people of the centre-left press up to the door of Palazzo dei Priori, where he would like to return as a winner. The Vaccara lineup is full, there isn’t even a seat behind the stage. More than a final rally, the closing of Vittoria Ferdinandi’s tour is a convention, a happening. Hundreds of young people mingle with the historic militants, who also arrived in the center on buses organized in the style of a football trip. The music played by DJ Ralf plays, but it is she, the center-left candidate, the star, the magnet, the one that everyone wants to see on stage. And she, Vittoria Ferdinandi, smiles, hugs and kisses all those who come to greet her and encourage her backstage. She in a black suit, elegant yet sober, she chews chewing gum and shakes hands.
Meanwhile on stage they flow images from the tour which started in March and touched all 52 neighborhoods of Perugia. Not a party flag among the crowd, in the name of the transversal alliance and the broad field. Renato Locchi emerges with his inseparable pipe, the historic mayor of a Perugia that later changed colour. “Vittoria is a smart girl – he says – In three months she has turned the situation from the deadlock that existed to this stuff here”. And he points smugly to the square.
You, Ferdinandi, goes on stage just after 8pm, after the music and words of Andrea Ferroni, political manager of the electoral campaign. She was greeted by a roar, flags waving and even a ‘two pole’ in Curva Nord style with the request “Take us to the sea”. The surgery lasts almost an hour. Excited but with a firm voice, she speaks off the cuff without even a piece of paper in her hands. You start by quoting Enrico Berlinguer, then you retrace “a collective electoral campaign, made up of streets and people, which gave blood back to a community that was no longer a community”. And she adds: “The desire for a gigantic part of the city has been rekindled and the ending could only be here, with a big party in our square.” He speaks of a “gentle revolution”, of “an act of rebellion by Perugia against tiredness, hatred and fear”, of “many young people who are with us and for this reason they attack me from the other side, because they are afraid of participation. But I – says Ferdinandi – I don’t want a city that is afraid: I want the city of rights, of work, of identity, humanity and respect. We are the bet that cannot be won. And yet we will win it.”
