Nico Wet
In occasion of the mourning of the Savoia family, I find the reconstruction of the person in negative terms distressing. A controversial figure, almost always acquitted. The news cannot be a bludgeon against a deceased person. Franco Sarto
Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia has passed away.
His passing evokes nothing in me but the respect that I address to any deceased. Massimo Marnetto
Dear readers,
When a public figure dies, it is a moral duty not to write false and insincere things. But it is also important not to be ruthless. Vittorio Emanuele did not live up to a tragic story.
The few times he intervened in public debate, he acted imprudently and resentfully, as someone who believed he had been wronged. (Unforgivable, for example, that he downplayed the seriousness of the racial laws). Thus, he did not even create a human empathy with the part of public opinion that was not prejudicially hostile to him, as his son Emanuele Filiberto has managed to do. The Savoia family has no defenders.
The left does not forgive them for endorsing fascism; the right for causing the fall and arrest of the Duce. It is indeed difficult to deny the responsibilities of Vittorio Emanuele III in the advent of Mussolini — now very much mourned — and also the extremely poor management of the armistice. However, before 1922, the king also had merits: he was not as much of a reactionary as his father, and in politics, his man was always the liberal reformist Giovanni Giolitti, and after the disaster of Caporetto, he did his duty to save the nation, certainly not alone. If the discourse becomes historical, his grandfather Vittorio Emanuele II was not just a hunter of ibex and women, as has been written; he is the king who made Italy (of course, not alone either).
Like it or not, without the Savoia family, Italy would not exist. This does not erase neither the mistakes of Vittorio Emanuele III nor the modesty of his grandson; but it is so. I know that many Italians would prefer to have the Austrians who hanged the patriots in Milan and Venice, the Pope King with the ghettos, gallows, and ecclesiastical tribunal in Rome, and in the South, Franceschiello or even directly between Diavolo and Ninco Nanco. But history went differently.
One last detail. On June 2, 1946, almost eleven million voters, equivalent to 45.7%, voted for the monarchy. Not for an abstract institution; for the Savoia family. Were they all conservatives and reactionaries?
No, monarchy was voted for by Benedetto Croce, the most important Italian intellectual, and Luigi Einaudi, the future president of the Republic. In Rome and in the South, the Savoia family won by a landslide. Let’s just say that our grandparents had a different idea of Italian history than we do. Sharing a space where we can discuss without the need to raise our voices to be heard.
Continuing to delve into the big issues of our time and contaminating them with life. Telling how history and news affect our daily lives. Tell it to the Corriere. Not heartfelt letters; an open window to life.
A daughter can tell about her father, a husband about his wife, a student about the teacher. Every Saturday, we thus choose the profile of an Italian who has left us. But we read them all, and they will all enrich us. A true or fantasy story.
The testimony of the decay of our cities or their beauty.