Controversy in Puglia over a school named after Sergio Ramelli

Naming a school after Sergio Ramelli is an opportunity for 'reflection on the constitutional principles of freedom of thought, democratic pluralism and civil coexistence' and on 'a victim of political violence' in Italian history, argues the municipality of Nardò. 'No, it is the shame of a toponymy that lends itself to historical revisionism', accuses the Lecce CGIL. These are some of the opposing views on the council resolution that in Nardò, a municipality of about 30,000 inhabitants 25 kilometres from Lecce, intends to name the new premises of a high school after Sergio Ramelli, the Fronte della Gioventù militant killed in Milan in 1975 at the age of just 18 by a commando of Avanguardia operaia.

The contrasts are put down in black and white and entrusted to social media, or to statements full of 'indignation'. As did the Salento CGIL, which did not like the municipal executive's measure because it 'humiliates the city that won the gold medal for civil valour for having welcomed the veterans of the Nazi-Fascist extermination camps'. The mayor of the city of Neretina and commissioner of the League for the province of Lecce, Pippi Mellone, took the opposite view. A few months ago, he had already been inundated with criticism after calling for the closure of the Lecce section of the ANPI, the national association of partisans.

The first citizen, who says he is far from Apulia, has no intention of replying and entrusts his thoughts to what is stated in the council decision. In which it is stated that the naming is 'in line with the civic and educational aims that the municipal administration is called upon to pursue in the exercise of its policy-making functions'. According to the resolution, 'Sergio Ramelli expressed his ideas through the drafting of a school paper', which in fact became the motive for his murder. Thus, 'the memory of these events constitutes the heritage of the Republic and recalls the primary value of human life, the rejection of violence as an instrument of political confrontation and respect for the dignity of the person,' it reads.

For the trade union, on the other hand, 'it remains a mystery how the idea of naming a school after a young neo-fascist can respond to constitutional values, since our Constitution is intrinsically anti-fascist'. The CGIL launches 'an appeal to the members of the collegiate bodies of the school and the provincial school office' so that they not only 'claim the autonomy of the institution they represent, enhance the role of the school as an educational agency that transmits the founding values of the Republic' but also that they 'do not let themselves be conditioned by the sympathies of the Minister of Education and by the unseemly institutional forcing of a mayor'.

FdI deputy Riccardo De Corato also joins the controversy, for whom it is 'aberrant that the Lecce CGIL has expressed profound disdain for the naming of a school after Sergio Ramelli, an undignified attitude that contributes to fuelling a climate of hatred that should be definitively overcome'. The parliamentarian recalls that in Milan, at the Molinari Institute, this year the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara and the undersecretary Paola Frassinetti unveiled a plaque in memory of Sergio Ramelli, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his murder.