GROSSETO – It will be named after Stenello Balloni, first provincial secretary of the CISL of Grosseto, the roundabout in via Senese, near the Savoia Cavalleria regiment. The inauguration, strongly desired by the family and promoted by the municipal administration, will take place Friday 28 June at 6pm.
Stenello Balloni was born in Gavorrano on 5 January 1914 in Gavorrano, an important mining centre, a miner himself at the Montecatini company, he had well experienced the hard life of someone who finds himself working for many hours underground, among other things in times still more difficult and dangerous. He had studied at the episcopal seminary of Grosseto and, hired by Montecatini in Gavorrano, in 1937, he began his intense life as a trade unionist which led him to be called by the Italian Confederation of Trade Union Workers to manage the Grosseto offices, where during his short life , was appreciated by all those who were lucky enough to know him for his generosity and great humanity, not only in his party, the Christian Democrats, but also by all his so-called political opponents.
The writers Luciano Bianciardi And Carlo Cassola in the book: “The Miners of the Maremma”, they remember him as a central and decisive figure in improving the working and living conditions of those who spent many hours of their existence in the mines.
In 1948, at the time of the union split and before definitively leaving the CGIL, he was a staunch supporter of the precise will of the vast majority of Italian workers not to be overwhelmed by intolerant and biased minorities, but to want to forcefully assert their rights: free of financial means, but animated by a profound spirit of sacrifice, Balloni was able to instill in his collaborators, in extremely difficult moments, the absolute certainty of the ideals of freedom and greater social justice, principles which he himself believed to be the basis of democratic trade union organisations.
His office was very popular, due to the seriousness and correctness that distinguished it and his merit was also that of having given rise to free trade unions in the city, for which both the Christian workers first and the communists themselves later always renewed their expressions of solidarity and esteem and thus it was possible for him to establish the new workers’ movement and he began to preside and direct the provincial office of the free trade unionists Casi and the trade union congresses of the LCGIL and the CISL.
He was an executive member of the Chamber of Labor of Grosseto and provincial secretary of the CISL., from 1948 until the year of his death in 1952. Due to his charisma, great communication and aggregation ability, the doors of Parliament were opened wide to him by the honorable lawyer Brunetto Bucciarelli Ducci and the plenipotentiary secretary of the DC, the honorable Amintore Fanfani, giving him a glimpse of a brilliant political career, unfortunately cut short by his premature death.
The funeral took place in Gavorrano, his hometown, but before that at the Grosseto Cathedral, in the square in front of which, the newspapers of the time indicate the presence of more than 4,000 people, demonstrating the esteem and affection he had communicated to all those who knew him.
After his death, in 1961, the porterage cooperative, today, was founded in the city Coop Stenello Balloni, which, bearing his name, has retained his memory as evidence of what consideration he had been capable of creating around himself.
