Racconti isolani

Summer Sunday

Ventotene, the island of confinement and the protagonists of Italian history

It is a rock in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea, less than two kilometres long, where the most sublime minds of anti-fascism were confined: from Pertini to Terracini, from Ravera to Bei. Altiero Spinelli, who with Colorni and Rossi conceived the Manifesto of a United Europe, is buried here.

23 September 2024

5' min read

He was the head of the socialist canteen of the confined, as the inscription on the Muraglione road recalls. Already then, evidently, a point of reference. Of course, never at that time would he have imagined that one day he would also become the Head of State. Sandro Pertini, between 1939 and 1943, was serving his sentence of confinement at Ventotene, little more than a rock in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea, tiny and remote, beaten by the wind that cools in summer and stuns in winter.

With him many minds that would forge the Republic, from Umberto Terracini to Mauro Scoccimarro, from Adele Bei to Camilla Ravera, but also the fathers of the Europe to come: Altiero Spinelli, Eugenio Colorni, Ernesto Rossi and, albeit in passing, Ursula Hirschmann and Ada Rossi, who would take the Europeanist Manifesto (1941) from there to the mainland, to Milan, guaranteeing the destiny it later had.

All were anti-fascists and fighting against a regime that deprived people of the most basic rights. But there were not only political dissidents. The dictatorship hit anyone who was out of line with the existing order: anarchists, trade unionists, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, foreigners (Albanians, above all) crowded the dormitories of the island's border citadel. To each of them - there were to be 800 of them after 1940 - Spinelli dedicates space in the beautiful How I tried to become a sage (il Mulino, 1984, just reprinted).

Meloni alla Camera: "L'Europa del manifesto Ventotene non è la mia" e scoppia la bagarre

Ventotene is a small handkerchief of land, which can be covered in a short time. Today, 250 inhabitants live there in winter and refuse to leave it for more comfortable and better served shores (in return, they savour the tranquillity, the silence, the dilated time... dimensions unknown in summer). The blue expanse of the sea, splendid even at night with the moonlight that coats it in silver, is interrupted by rocks prey to the youngsters who dive in frenziedly. Opposite the beach of Calanave, looms the island of Santo Stefano with its Bourbon prison for lifers.

Nothing remains of the citadel built for the confined, the structures were demolished in 1980; what remains is a memorial in the shade of two tamarisk trees, where the women's pavilion once stood, and the traces of those who want to preserve the memory and have built an itinerary indicating the moments and places of the segregated militants. Who, respecting certain time slots, could move around the historical centre, cultivate the land, practise handicrafts. Anything to spend their time in that restricted space, watched by the police on sight, bound by an uneasy relationship with the islanders, who in turn risked incurring penalties or suspicion when they showed excessive proximity to them.

Every day was the same, if not worse. As when, due to costly connections to the mainland and the dramatic consequences of the ongoing war, it became increasingly complicated to get food and water to those two square kilometres, and people suffered - literally - starvation. Scenarios that today, 80 years later, seem far-fetched, even more so in front of an unparalleled sunset at Parata grande: at the top of the road, the enchantment of the sun resting on the profile of Ponza while Palmarola, on the right, fades into a soft orange. Behind are the red house and, further down, the white villa where Ferie d'agosto was filmed, 27 years ago, with Silvio Orlando and Ennio Fantastichini portraying the eternal battle between left and right through the opposing views of the lives of two families.

For the confined - whose everyday life is reconstructed in Filomena Gargiulo's valuable work Ventotene isola di confino (Ultima spiaggia 2013) - 'before any other anguish there was the anguish of nature. Imagine a prison placed at the disposal of a cruel tyrant, of a snarling and vengeful God. The bare walls and the sea. That flat, empty, infinite sea, which surrounds you like an insuperable ring, a bolt of unbreakable strength, a sentinel that never sleeps. (...) That of the sea soon becomes a background of silence'. With these words, the socialist Alberto Jacometti conveys the mood of the recluse. He too probably spent a few moments in the heart of the island, in Piazza Castello, where the imposing fortress built by the Bourbons - on top of which the fascists had built two more floors - was occupied by the militia. Today it is the seat of the municipality and the flags of European states fly there. On the wall below, the mural reproducing the text of the Manifesto - a work by the artist Giovanni Anastasia, with the collaboration of Valeria Iozzi - and the Tray painted by Ernesto Rossi, with characters and situations from those years, remind carefree strollers, perhaps after a boat ride, what happened. This is also done by the Ultima spiaggia bookshop - always lively, a pleasure for the eyes - wisely led by Fabio Masi, who keeps the memory of that season alive through well-displayed research and testimonies, including the portrait of Ursula Hirschmann written by Silvana Boccanfuso.

Meloni: "Manifesto di Ventotene non è la mia Europa". Bagarre in aula

The intense ochre of the town hall is matched by the pink and other colours of the houses that slope down towards the Roman port along narrow hairpin bends, or follow one another towards the second small square where the church is located, dedicated to Saint Candida, the island's patron saint (it is with the three-day celebration dedicated to her, which ended last Friday, that the summer ends here), or along the Via degli Ulivi or towards Calanave, one of the two beaches. The other, less frequented, is Cala Rossano, over which the cemetery, closed by a gate, watches from above. A Ventotenese who stops in recollection at a tomb tells that each one has its own key, then points to a European flag moved by the ever-present wind: it is the blue banner that, even before the name engraved on the marble, marks the tomb of Altiero Spinelli. No wonder he wanted to be buried here. Nor is it surprising that the stele that dominates the little square, bearing the impressions of his escape, on 18 August 1943, was engraved: Mussolini had fallen, and with him the isolation of 'Confinopoli'. On a rickety boat, intoxicated by their newfound freedom, they left Ventotene for Formia. For many of them the battle was not only not over but would enter a decisive phase after 8 September, with the Resistance.

On that 18 August, Spinelli went on to write, 'I was watching the island disappear where I had reached the bottom of solitude, where I had come across the decisive friendships of my life, where I had gone hungry, where I had contemplated the tragedy of the Second World War as if from a distant gallery (...) I had discovered the abyss of resignation, the virtue of detachment, the pleasure of clean thinking', with the awareness that there was nothing concrete except 'for now, apart from myself, a Manifesto, a few theses and three or four friends'.

A new life was opening, an unrepeatable era would be inaugurated a few years later, with many of those confined to the benches of the Constituent Assembly to redesign a free Italy. Who knows how many were reminded of the island of Ventotene, 'all alone made of light and colour' in Camilla Ravera's memories. Colours that 'in the clear spring air have the maximum clarity and splendour' only to fade, observes the future senator for life, in summer when 'you can only see the magnificence of the sea'.