2 June 1946: how Italy discovered itself as a republican
The Notepad of Michael the Great
On 2 June 1946, the Italians disciplined themselves in line in front of the polling stations. The ballot paper in your hands is simple, with a concise title (“Referendum on the institutional form of the State”) and two clear symbols. On the left, the profile of the peninsula and in the center a woman's head with a turreted crown adorned with laurel and oak leaves: above, the word "Republic". On the right, a profile of the peninsula almost identical to the other and in the center the Savoy coat of arms (the shield with the white cross): above, the word “Monarchy”.
The choice of the turreted woman of the republican mark had been rejected by Falcone Lucifer, because it was guilty of misleading the voter. In fact, for popular iconography that female image was the very symbol of the Risorgimento. Its origin dates back to the liberal age, in which the idea of nation was associated with an idea of youth and grace: since then it appeared with this effigy in school aids, patriotic posters, postage stamps. But, despite the repeated protests, in the end the Minister of the Royal House had to yield to the will of the Minister of the Interior, an adamant Giuseppe Romita.
On 3 June the polls close. Almost twenty-five million voters (thirteen million women) participated in the newborn universal suffrage, 90 percent of those entitled to vote. But the count is slow and provides significantly different results from those expected: instead of an overwhelming Republican victory, a controversial victory and a country geographically split in two, the monarchical South and the Republican Center-North. Moreover, the results arrive at the Interior Ministry late. The most timely are those of the southern regions, where the war had long since ended and it had been possible to restore telegraphs and telephone lines. The data is fragmentary and unofficial, but some newspapers are unbalanced by announcing the probable success of the monarchy.
As Gianni Oliva points out in a book written “sine ira et studio” (“The last days of the monarchy”, Mondadori, 2016), Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi himself thinks that the king has made it. The percentages change during the night between 4 and 5 June, when all the data from the North pour in: 54 per cent to the republic and 46 per cent to the monarchy, a difference of about one million and seven hundred thousand votes. The announcement of the result is up to the Supreme Court, but the "turnaround" is a bitter chalice for the losers: the first rumors of fraud spread, the executive is accused of having manipulated the data, the metropolitan legend of Romita who allegedly hid in the drawers of the Interior Ministry one million cards reserved for the republic.
The outcome of the referendum, however, displaces the parties of the National Liberation Committee (all pro-republican, except the liberal one). They were in fact convinced that the voters would severely punish the "felony" of Vittorio Emanuele III (copyright Palmiro Togliatti): fascism, racial laws, the alliance with Hitler, a ruinous war conflict, on 8 September 1943, the escape to Pescara. Queen Maria José even feared that the monarchy would not cross the 15 percent threshold.
Curiously, the wife of Umberto II underestimated how deeply the figure of the sovereign was deeply rooted in the collective imagination of the Italians, many of whom considered the history of the Savoy and homeland history as two sides of the same coin. Furthermore, the season of hunger and destruction, of the partisan struggle and of German reprisals, had been experienced above all beyond the Po. captivating for the measured style and the elegance of the manners: his every appearance in public shifted consensus in favor of the monarchy. In short, that 46 percent could not alleviate the bitterness of the defeated, moreover mocked on the wire.
Mountains of appeals are therefore forwarded to the Supreme Court. A group of authoritative professors from the University of Padua, under the aegis of the deputy Enzo Selvaggi, even asks to suspend any decision, as the decree establishing the referendum spoke of the victory of the side that obtains the "majority of voters", and not the "majority of valid votes". Between legal Byzantinisms and political skirmishes, confusion skyrockets. As noted by Vittorio Gorresio, then head of the journalist of Mario Pannunzio's “Liberal Risorgimento”, in Rome “the crowd in Piazza Montecitorio asked for the flag, but none were displayed because they didn't know which one”. And, together with the appeals, protests are triggered. Here the Neapolitan masses enter the scene.
On 6 June their awakening was abrupt: while eight out of ten inhabitants had chosen the monarchy (surpassed only by the people of Messina, Catania and Palermo), the majority of Italians had opted for the republic. The Neapolitan prefecture is worried about the possibility of unrest, also because Maria José and her four children had moved to Villa Rosebery the previous day, waiting to embark for Portugal on the cruiser “Duca degli Abruzzi”. The royal family is therefore invited to leave Naples at the first light of dawn.
The climate heats up in the middle of the afternoon, when in Piazza del Carmine a crowd of women begins to hurl insults against the republicans "starving the people". As evening falls, at least five hundred young people head towards the carabinieri station in via Sant'Antonio to take over the armory, relying on the Corps' traditional loyalty to the Savoy dynasty. In response, the marshal who commanded the station, Filippo Cucuzza, fires a few shots into the air for intimidation purposes.
The protesters at first disperse, but soon return to the charge and hurl a bomb at the nearby church, injuring a dozen people unrelated to the scuffles. Despite the intervention of the army, they do not stop piling stones uprooted from the pavement, they erect barricades with the carts parked in the courtyards, they line up like tortoises. What is unleashed is a real urban guerrilla, an unusual experience in a country accustomed for twenty years to witnessing only disciplined regime marches.
The riots have been quelled with difficulty, there are numerous bruises and six seriously injured. One of these, the painter Ciro Martino, died before being rescued by doctors. Naples sinks into the emergency: tracked vehicles patrol the city, the infantrymen sift through every corner in search of the bad guys, the carabinieri interrogate and stop dozens of people. In a meeting with Guglielmo Giannini and other Neapolitan politicians, Romita minimizes what happened: there is no plan to subvert the referendum result, but only the occasional intersection between the social malaise of the humblest classes, anxious above all for the scarcity and rising food prices, and the angry reaction of royalist extremists.
On the morning of the following day, posters signed by an elusive "monarchical group" are posted on the walls of the Campania capital, invoking the separation of Naples from Italy and the creation of an independent state led by Umberto II. Around noon, a thousand people celebrating the monarchy gather in Piazza Carlo III. In a flash a huge procession forms, which moves towards the railway and continues towards the Rettifilo chanting "Vi-va-il-re" and slogans against the "referendum scam".
There are university students, shopkeepers, artisans, construction workers, laborers, idlers without a profession and even some intellectuals. The initiative, in which the militants of the "Savoia Groups" stand out, the most combative of the Neapolitan monarchical associations, quickly transforms from a testimony of faith into a muscular exhibition. Arrived near the University, the procession is faced by a barrage of police and carabinieri. First whistles and screams, then the explosion of a hand grenade on the facade of the Albergo Nazionale. The crowd sways fearfully. A soldier, in a panic, releases a bullet from his musket that slashes his chest.
The incident exasperates the spirits. Repeated bursts of rifle fire are heard in the air. The demonstrators, now many thousands, then formed two new processions: the largest heads towards Via Roma, the second reaches Piazza del Plebiscito. The whole center of Naples is blocked. The Commissariat of the Market section is attacked by a handful of violent men. The clashes are very bitter. The wounded fill the hospital wards. A seventeen-year-old port porter lies on the ground with his abdomen punctured by a bullet. Meanwhile, news of other scuffles broke out in Palermo, Bari and Taranto. “At the end of that long Neapolitan day – Romita observes – no one could swear what would happen the next day”.
In the meantime, Umberto II -pressed by his closest advisers- tries to resist and awaits the ruling of the Supreme Court. The government, on the other hand, is in a hurry and wants to confront the judges with a fait accompli. The country's political temperature rises dramatically. And the consequences are not long in coming. Also in Naples, on 11 June the monarchist activists take the field again. The main theater of the clashes is now via Medina, where the headquarters of the communist federation is located. To prevent its devastation, some agents fire on the most resolute demonstrators. One of them, Mario Fioretti, is shot to death. The protest movement turns into an explicit insurrectional movement. This is followed by a wild and furious guerrilla, which lasted more than three hours: cars set on fire, overturned tram cars, makeshift trenches in the surrounding lanes.
The situation becomes particularly critical for the communist militants barricaded in the federation premises, among which there is a very young Giorgio Napolitano. Giorgio Amendola, at the time undersecretary to the presidency of the Council, pressed the city authorities for an even more energetic intervention. The night passes between the sirens of the ambulances and the thud of the armored cars. The balance is drawn up by the police the following morning: seven dead boys, all under the age of twenty-five; seventy-one injured were hospitalized, twenty-two of which were policemen, carabinieri and soldiers. In the following days there will be other deaths, for a total of eleven deaths, nine civilians and two officers.
On 13 June Umberto II returns to the Quirinale from his accommodation in via Verona. De Gasperi has just been notified of his decision to leave Italy. The departure for the Portuguese exile, however, is accompanied by a proclamation, which the Ansa broadcasts in the evening. In it, the "King of May" accuses the government of having assumed "by unilateral and arbitrary powers that are not its own", and of having "placed it in the alternative of causing bloodshed or of suffering violence". On June 16 the newspapers no longer speak of Umberto II, the referendum and the dead in Naples. The titles are all for the unknown cyclist from Trieste Giordano Cottur: he beat his opponents on the Superga climb, wearing the first pink jersey of the "Giro della Rinascimento".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/2-giugno-1946/ on Thu, 02 Jun 2022 07:20:21 +0000.