The No Kings procession in Rome. And the Ilaria Salis case

Furthermore, it was stated that 'the staff intervened only to request documents from her and the person in her company. As soon as the staff realised that it was the MEP, all checks were stopped and the hotel room was not entered. Therefore, no search and no action was taken'.

"Under no circumstances and in no way can the identification be correlated with the recently passed regulations on public order," it added.

'It is therefore categorically ruled out,' it is emphasised, 'that this could have been a preventive control carried out in connection with today's event, but rather an act due to international obligations'.

Under observation were above all the access points to the city: highway toll booths, railway stations, underground stations. It is there that a decisive part of the preventive filter set up by the authorities is concentrated, to monitor arrivals and nip in the bud any presences deemed sensitive. The fear is that organised groups could exploit the visibility of the procession to insert themselves in the flow of demonstrators, raise tension and turn the square into a battleground.

The investigators' attention was also focused on the announced participation of circles from the antagonist area and realities close to the Askatasuna social centre, a historical expression of the autonomous movements and long monitored by the security apparatuses. In this framework, the procession is read not only as an appointment of protest, but as a possible political junction to be observed carefully, also for its future repercussions.

Extremist circles, according to qualified sources, could in fact try to capitalise over time on the following gathered by the ProPal mobilisation, reshaping anti-militarism in an anti-rearmament key and consolidating, along this line, links with similar transnational networks. A process that is being followed carefully because it could weld, within the same mobilisation framework, radical demands, ideological activism and protest circuits that have already emerged in recent months.

To make the picture even more delicate is also the context that has developed in recent weeks. The level of vigilance of the forces of law and order has been further raised after the recent explosion in the Parco degli Acquedotti, in Rome, where two militants of the anarchic-insurrectionalist area died while, according to the investigative hypothesis, they were assembling a homemade bomb. An episode that reinforced the approach of maximum prevention around today's demonstration.

It is no coincidence that, speaking at the question time in the Chamber of Deputies, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi reiterated that 'there must be no room for those who with violence intend to subvert democracy and replace it with chaos'.