Giacomo Mancini's statue removed in Cosenza: 'Space for Mab exhibition'

The news made the rounds on mobile phones, bouncing across screens with posts and videos. The decision by Cosenza's municipal administration to move the bronze statue of Giacomo Mancini from Largo Carratelli to Piazza Giacomo Mancini, about one hundred metres away, has provoked a wave of protests and heated reactions in the city. Not only from the socialist leader's political heirs, but also from ordinary citizens, regardless of political affiliation, who perceived the gesture as an offence to the city's collective memory and history. Mancini, the 'socialist lion', is part of Cosenza's history, he embodies a city with its head held high and its back straight, but he was also and above all a leader on a national scale, minister, party secretary, refined intellectual and in his last years mayor of precisely his city, which he loved dearly, respected by his friends but also by his enemies. This is why the municipality's decision to move the statue a few metres further away caused an uproar.

The work of art, created by sculptor Domenico Sepe on behalf of the foundation named after the former mayor and parliamentarian, had been located at the beginning of Cosenza's main street, in the immediate vicinity of the Town Hall, for two years. The move, decided by Mayor Franz Caruso, a socialist linked by a long friendship to the Mancini family, gave rise to a lively controversy. According to Caruso, the decision to move the statue is linked to technical and cultural reasons: 'We had arranged for the statue to be moved to a nearby square, named after Mancini,' explained the mayor, 'because the agreement in place with the Bilotti Foundation, which has donated the extraordinary works of Mab, the Bilotti open-air museum, to the city, reserves the entire area of Corso Mazzini, including the section where the statue was, for the contemporary art museum route. But the hypothesis of the move was rejected by the owners of the statue, the Giacomo Mancini Foundation. 'Only one of Giacomo's daughters agreed, Giosi,' Caruso added. The works on display along the Corso include masterpieces by Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalì, Mimmo Rotella, Emilio Greco and Giacomo Manzù, part of the collection donated by patrons Carlo and Enzo Bilotti. The aim, according to Caruso, would have been to enhance the work dedicated to Mancini by remounting it with greater scenic prominence on a marble pedestal in the square that already bears his name.

However, this decision has raised serious concerns. The Giacomo Mancini Foundation, owner of the statue, formally warned the municipality against proceeding with the transfer, considering it arbitrary and contrary to the original agreements. Numerous citizens have expressed their opposition to the operation, calling it disrespectful. For many, more than a logistical issue, it was a symbolic wound, experienced as an act of removal of historical memory. One of the most critical voices was that of the former mayor's grandson, Giacomo Mancini Jr, who is also vice-president of the Foundation of the same name: 'It was a serious gesture that offends not only the figure of my grandfather, but the very identity of Cosenza,' he wrote in a post on Facebook. 'The statue was removed from a place where it conversed with the city, with its institutional history. To do so without the Foundation's consent and in this way was a slap in the face to the memory and feelings of thousands of citizens'. An affair destined to cause debate and which will continue in court in the wake of the complaints lodged against the municipality. And the statue of the Socialist Lion? For now, it has returned to the Foundation's headquarters and will soon be exhibited, the relatives explain, in an iconic place, in full view. But without - they add - the need for the administration's approval.

The political battles of the socialist lion Giacomo Mancini are countless, as many as his long and articulate political life. These include the introduction of the Sabin polio vaccine at the time of his appointment as Minister of Health and the construction of the motorway that connected a chunk of the South and represented a dream for many southerners, as well as an extraordinary economic driver. Autonomist, Nennian and a leading figure of the centre-left, Giacomo Mancini was a leading figure in Italian political life after the Second World War. He held various government posts: he was Minister of Health in the first Moro government, Minister of Public Works in the second and third Moro governments and in the first Rumor government, and finally Minister for Extraordinary Interventions in Southern Italy in the fifth Rumor government. As Minister of Public Works, he was one of the promoters of the bridging law on town planning that is still in force today. In the Italian Socialist Party, Mancini was appointed deputy national secretary on 9 June 1969, during Francesco De Martino's secretariat, and on 23 April 1970 he became party secretary. Finally, in 1993 he was elected mayor of his city, Cosenza, remaining in office until 2002, for two consecutive terms. And occupying a special place in the hearts of his fellow citizens ever since.