January 2025
45 years after the massacre at the station there is the final truth about the instigators and perpetrators of the attack which cost the lives of 85 people (and 200 injured): Licio Gelli “financed the massacre”, Paolo Bellini “brought the bomb to the station on 2 August 1980”. The stamp comes from the Court of Assizes of Appeal which in January clarified the role played by the neo-fascist groups, by the head of the P2 lodge and by the Piduist leaders of the Italian secret services. Role that Paolo Bolognesileaving the driving to Paolo Lambertinithe new president of the victims’ family association, will remind the government of Meloni on the eve of the commemoration, on 2 August.
Il President of the Republic Mattarella declares that the massacre was an “indelible sign of inhumanity on the part of a ruthless neo-fascist subversive strategy that aimed to attack constitutional values, social achievements and, with them, our very civil coexistence”. Bolognesi thunders from the stage: “All the massacres have passed through the MSI.”
February 2025
The Municipality presents the bill: increase in bus ticket prices, with related controversies. And the “pearls”, the Pearl workers, are fighting for their jobs. In February the exhibition celebrating their tenacity opens in Salaborsa: “Sisters of Italy: the luxury of resisting”. They will win, after a long struggle. The announcement was made in early December: all hired by “La Perla Atelier”, the new company controlled by the American billionaire Peter Kerr. A bitter Christmas instead for Woolrich employees, with over one hundred transfers planned from Bologna to Turin.
March 2025
On March 8, 15,000 marched in procession, shouting: “The revolution is woman”. But also: “We are tired of being underpaid”, against patriarchy, for rights. The reply, with another fuchsia tide, on November 25th, against violence, feminicides: “Here for Sofia Stefani, for Tania Bellinetti”.
Meanwhile, the housing emergency that marks the whole of 2025 is becoming more pressing. The Municipality takes action, starts, but it takes months, the Foundation for living, inaugurates social cohousing in Bolognina at the end of the year, where the XM24 was. A run-up. In October, after evictions with the police at the doors and doors being broken down, 140 people occupied the building of the former electoral offices in via Don Minzoni. A solution will be found, there are many, too many children. And there are even those who are not in arrears who end up out of the house. Like Giusy De Luca, a single mother, employed in a cleaning company whose rent in a two-room apartment in via Barbieri has skyrocketed from 550 to 1200 euros per month.
April 2025
The square is for Europe and for peace, born from an idea launched in Repubblica by Michele Serra and desired in Bologna by the mayors Matteo Lepore and Sara Funaro (Florence). The Hymn to Joy, played by the students of the conservatory, the video message by Romano Prodi which urges us to move in the spirit of Ventotene: “There is no more time”. And Alessandro Bergonzoni’s invitation to “remain superhuman” to the sound of an anti-aircraft siren.
On April 25th we celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Liberation. Full squares in Bologna, crowds in Monte Sole and the resistant Pratello. “Today we make a profession of anti-fascism” the warning of Mayor Lepore.
Maggio 2025
Renzo Ulivieri is right: “Bologna’s successes are successes of the people, this Bologna is the team of its people.” It’s May 14th and success arrives at the Olimpico: Bologna is in Heaven, they win the Italian Cup. And joy overflows into Piazza Maggiore. Because that’s where we celebrate, 51 years later.
June 2025
After the celebration in rossoblù, comes the one in black and white. Virtus wins Scudetto number 17. Game 3 on 17 June turns into a triumphal ride: 96-74 in Brescia. All wearing the number 33 shirt of their teammate hospitalized for leukemia: Achille Polonara. He who fights for another battle and looks out from the window of Sant’Orsola and holds the trophy.
July 2025
Marina Cortini shakes her head: “We are demoralized”. He is among the residents in Val di Zena who have suffered three floods. In July, around a hundred took up shovels and pushed wheelbarrows on the river, at Botteghino di Zocca, to ask the institutions for certain dates and plans to make the waterway safe. Because with every rain the fear returns.
August 2025
The first are Hind, 4 years old; Kfir, a few months. And then Jumaa, Nur, Jamal, Mohammed. It is a painful litany that the bishop and president of the CEI Matteo Zuppi punctuates on 14 August in front of the church of Casaglia, in Monte Sole, the scene of the Nazi-fascist massacre in 1944. They are the names of the Israeli and Palestinian children killed since 7 October 2023, 12 thousand names read for hours, until late in the evening. Powerful.
September 2025
Bologna says goodbye to Stefano Benni. Il Lupo passed away alone, on September 9th, at the age of 78. A frightened comic warrior, he leaves the bar cinno, the Luisona pasta, the tennico forever in Bologna. And much more. His friend Daniel Pennac greets him like this: “He was a brother to me. God stole his laughter because he urgently needed to have him close.”
October 2025
October 3rd is the day of the general strike called by the CGIL and USB for Gaza and in support of the Flotilla, where Yassine Lafram, former Ucoii president from Bologna, also joined. Participation is beyond all expectations, ring roads and motorways blocked, clashes in queues.
In September there was another demonstration for Gaza with large numbers, thirty thousand, and blockade of the city: for Gaza, against the genocide, the strike called by the grassroots unions. Two mobilisations, among many, which have involved Bologna in recent months, including peaceful marches and protests, violence and anger. Until the night of guerrilla warfare in the center for the Virtus-Maccabi match on November 21st.
November 2025
The University of Bologna honorary degree in Philosophical Sciences Ken Loach. The 89-year-old director, in a passage of his master’s lecture, connected from King’s College London, makes no concessions: “We live in terrible times where the new weapons to exploit workers are precariousness and uncertainty, anger and disillusionment pass through old and new generations”. His exhortation: “Let’s remember the social issues, poverty, inequality, climate change. We have the knowledge, we have the passion. Let’s do it.”
December 2025
The Reno canal uncovered (the canals of Bologna?!), Via Indipendenza freed from tram construction sites and made pedestrian. Two positive images of a year spent amidst the suffering of traders and residents, protests, queues in cars, traffic jams due to construction. It’s not over. But the city turns on the lights and greets 2025 with Luca Carboni: “Bologna is a rule”.
