Peracchini, Mayor of La Spezia: 'You have to help young people to dialogue. The future belongs to them'

"It is a great sorrow, a great sadness. I know almost all the kids who go to high school. I write to them on Instagram'. With these words, Pierluigi Peracchini, mayor of La Spezia, spoke on Saturday morning on Radio 24's 'Friends and Enemies' programme about the death of 19-year-old Abanoub Youssef, who was killed on Friday by his peer Zouhair Atif, who stabbed him, possibly out of jealousy. The episode occurred inside the school attended by the two boys, the Einaudi-Chiodo Institute in the Ligurian city. Here, students are prepared for a working life in various fields: from yacht construction to dental technology.

Interviewed by presenters Marianna Aprile and Daniele Bellasio, Peracchini says he remembers Youssef and has also spoken to him via social media. The mayor, in fact, claims constant contact with the young people of La Spezia: "We talk to them to make them understand that the future belongs to them. These tragedies are incomprehensible but we must understand why they happen. In Italy we live in a moment in which society, which no longer has borders, undergoes transformations. Values are less felt and we must work hard to bring the culture of goodness and respect to all'.

In this moment of grief for the city, then, Mayor Peracchini puts the brakes on the fear of possible tensions between groups of young people following the student's death: "The monitoring by institutions and the police is constant". In recent years, moreover, "as an administration we have doubled controls and surveillance". Often, however, 'it is difficult to prevent tensions'. Not least because, according to Peracchini, at the moment not only La Spezia but the whole of Italy is going through a moment of profound change: 'we have to accept it, but we have to work to deal with it.

A work that also passes through the schools. "I know almost all the teachers: we talk every day. Perhaps a few more psychologists are needed to make young people understand that it is better to dialogue and build the future together than to argue. We need cultural and value work" in which to involve everyone.

Finally, Peracchini returned to the words he had spoken on Friday evening, a few hours after the attack on Abanoub Youssef. The mayor had said that the culture of using knives was peculiar to 'certain ethnic groups' - Atif is of Moroccan origin, while the victim was of Egyptian origin.
Referring back to the particularly emotional moment in which that statement was made, the first citizen tries to clarify: 'I was referring to a more complex sociological concept: we cannot hide the fact that there is a fashion in some groups for using knives. That would be to reject reality'. A phenomenon found in everyday life, explains Peracchini, who adds, 'I did not make an argument about foreigners but about the culture that has led some people to keep a knife in their pockets'.