DE GASPERI AND EUROPE

Alcide De Gasperi's work made a profound mark

on Italian and European history.

The man always defended democratic freedoms

and laid the foundations for Italy's civil and economic rebirth

after the Second World War,

while making a fundamental contribution to the European cooperation process.

It all began here in Pieve Tesino in 1881.

Alcide De Gasperi was the first of four children,

three boys and one girl,

and the son of Amedeo De Gasperi, chief of police,

and Maria Morandini, housewife.

Their home was a humble building in the town centre,

which will now be preserved as a national monument

by the town council.

ALCIDE DE GASPERI WAS BORN IN THIS HOUSE

The Tesino basin in the Sugana Valley

in the Eastern territory of Trentino, bordering Veneto,

is one of the many plateaus in the Alpine foothills,

a green corner inhabited by hard-working and peaceful people.

In the late 1800s,

most people here were engaged in pastoralism, farming and craftsmanship.

Yet resources were scarce.

The land was not enough to meet the needs of people

"who often lived", Cesare Battisti wrote,

"in ugly and unhealthy dwellings,

with straw roofs and kitchens covered in black soot

due to the lack of chimneys."

Today, thanks to tourism and other service sector businesses,

these valleys offer a different standard of living,

but in the late 1800s and over much of the early 1900s,

many people from these areas contributed to the migration streams

to Northern Europe, the Americas,

and to the Slavic territories controlled by Austria.

GUIDE FOR ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS

In 1884, his father Amedeo, due to work,

relocated to Civezzano with his wife Maria and little Alcide,

and later to Trento.

In the meantime, the family had grown

with the births of Mario, Marcella and Augusto.

Trento, on the banks of the Adige river, was the capital of Trentino,

a region of Italian traditions and culture subjected to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Back then, it was still a small town of just over 20,000 inhabitants,

but it was rich with history and culture,

and attentive to the cultural, political and social debates

that were going on in Europe.

The young Alcide, photographed here with his second-born brother Mario,

was enrolled in the Bishop's College in 1892 at the age of 11.

Four years later, the adolescent De Gasperi

moved on to the Imperial Regio Ginnasio in Trento,

today known as Liceo Ginnasio Prati.

His high school diploma is still kept in their archives.

EXAM RESULTS: GRADUATED

CERTIFICATE ISSUED ON JULY 20TH 1900

TAKING THE EXAM FOR THE FIRST TIME

NEXT ACADEMIC PROGRAMME OF INTEREST: PHILOLOGY

The young De Gasperi's interest in politics began to show

during his years as a student with modest financial means,

at the Faculty of Modern Philology at the University of Vienna.

The capital of the Habsburg Empire

was still the centre of the political, cultural and social interests

of the Old Continent.

It was the symbol of an ancient tradition of preservation

and of a healthy and efficient administration.

Vienna still seemed to be a bulwark for the old Christian Europe,

which had heavily relied on the throne-altar duo.

But the grandeur of the old Danubian capital

couldn't completely hide and suffocate,

despite the untroubled climate of the Belle Epoque,

its cracks and the marks of time.

It couldn't restrain the turmoil from the remote provinces of the Empire,

which demanded the recognition of the rights of ethnic minorities,

as well as respect for the cultures, languages and customs

of the people striving for further independence

and wishing to break free from strong political domination.

While in the lively student environment in Vienna,

the young De Gasperi joined the Italian student movement

demanding the establishment of an Italian university in Trieste.

Such a demand provoked riots and uprisings in Innsbruck.

In 1904, that experience cost him,

as well as Cesare Battisti and other Italian students,

arrest and incarceration for 20 days,

which led him to consider political battles in a more practical sense,

and to start refusing overly radical positions.

Out of contempt, on Innsbruck's prison gate

the Austrian students wrote: "Italian Faculty".

De Gasperi graduated in 1905,

when he had already started an intense journalistic and political career.

In 1906, De Gasperi, with the approval of Church authorities,

changed the newspaper's name to Il Trentino,

in order to underline a non-religious aspect to the publication.

Liberalism, Socialism and Pan-Germanism were the primary targets

of young De Gasperi's journalistic and political battles.

He criticised the Liberals

for their fight against the clergy and the Church.

For "a spirit", he wrote, "of inhumane capitalism

that took advantage of the gullibility of a bunch of idealists

and of the unaware people."

He also bitterly criticised the Socialists of Cesare Battisti,

editor of the newspaper Il Popolo,

and the Pan-Germanist authoritarian ideology of Tiroler Volksbund.

In June 1911, aged 30,

De Gasperi was elected a Member of Parliament in Vienna,

as a representative of the Trentino People's Party.

Back then, the Parliament of Vienna still represented,

on the eve of the First World War,

a meeting point for debates

between the various nationalities in the Habsburg Empire.

Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes, Romanians,

Croatians, Serbs, Slovenians, Italians.

De Gasperi was specifically committed

to defending the interests of Trentino and the Italian people.

His concerns were confirmed on June 28th, 1914,

when Sarajevo became the scene of two assassinations,

those of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife

at the hands of Bosnian student Gavrilo Princip.

The event elicited a strong reaction in Austria

and generated alarm and mobilization all over Europe.

Alliances started coming into play.

Within just a few weeks, Europe was inflamed.

It was the First World War.

AT WAR WITH ITALY

The outbreak of the war deeply upset De Gasperi.

In his articles, he wrote about "God's Hour",

and of an "Inexorable Fate, against which man is impotent,

when the clock strikes the tragic hour.

A war is a sign that people have deserted the law of God

and given free rein to the most violent irrational impulses."

De Gasperi was convinced

that only cooperation among people and respect for different cultures

could promote civil development in Europe.

He expressed his Italian identity primarily

by safeguarding the administrative independence

and the cultural heritage of the people in Trentino.

However, on July 12th, 1916

when Cesare Battisti was hanged in the pit of the Buonconsiglio Castle

along with Istrian Fabio Filzi,

and after Damiano Chiesa from Trento was executed by firing squad,

De Gasperi remained deeply troubled.

He was the only politician

to make an outcry in the Austrian parliamentary chamber.

On November 3rd, 1918, Italian troops entered Trento.

The Italian flag was hoisted on the tower of the Buonconsiglio Castle.

The King, along with head of government Vittorio Emanuele Orlando,

also went to Trento to pay tribute to the new Redeemed Territories.

The end of the war caused a profound transformation

in European political life.

The long-established dynasties in Germany and Austria collapsed,

while Lenin led the first major Socialist revolution in history in Russia,

thereby instilling high expectations in the working class all over the world.

Italy, too, underwent a profound political transformation.

The Liberal hegemony had died out with the war

and the mass parties, Socialists and Catholics, emerged.

Catholics were represented by Luigi Sturzo's People's Party.

De Gasperi found, in Sturzo's Italian People's Party,

his new natural political position.

He was elected MP on May 15th, 1921

and also took over the presidency of the PPI Parliamentary Group.

During those months, Fascism emerged

with Squadrismo in the countryside,

punitive expeditions against labour movements

and workers as well as farmers' organizations.

The March on Rome on October 28th, 1922

was the end of the crisis of the Liberal State,

which had been unable to offer the country a real democratic alternative to Fascism.

And yet, in that moment, Mussolini's rise seemed to many people,

and also to De Gasperi,

an extreme attempt

at promoting the normalization of Italy's political life

by bringing about a kind of legalization of Fascism.

However, De Gasperi's trust didn't last very long.

Fascism pretended to be attentive to the values of religion,

respectful to the Holy See,

but couldn't hide its violent, intolerant, and profoundly anti-Christian nature.

Fascist attacks and violences against members and offices of the People's Party

revealed their goal of pushing the Catholic world

towards a supine acceptance of the emerging regime.

The summer of 1923 marked the most delicate moment in this process,

which forced Sturzo's resignation

from the political secretariat of the People's Party,

and the murder of the parish priest of Argenta, Don Giovanni Minzoni.

In May 1924,

De Gasperi took over as political secretary of the Party.

He led the Party through the harsh climate of the elections that same year.

When the Chamber reopened, Socialist Giacomo Matteotti

fiercely disputed the legitimacy of the elections,

but on June 10th, while walking along the Lungotevere Arnaldo da Brescia,

Matteotti was kidnapped by five Fascist hitmen,

who beat him and brutally murdered him.

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF MATTEOTTI'S MARTYRDOM

The anti-Fascist political forces reacted with a strong moral denunciation.

They left the Chamber of Deputies and initiated the Aventine Secession,

which was also joined by De Gasperi and the People's Party,

by holding fast to the unbending and democratic tradition

of the Catholic movement.

During the People's Party's last congress,

which was held in Rome almost in secret in June 1925

in the hall of the Associazione del Pubblico Impiego

on Via Monti della Farina,

De Gasperi reasserted the Christian inspiration of the Party,

the values of freedom and justice,

and he encouraged the Party members to stay strong until the end.

OFFICIAL ITALIAN PEOPLE'S PARTY BULLETIN

In October 1924,

Mussolini's paper, Il Popolo d'Italia, ran a smear campaign against De Gasperi

and accused him of expressing pro-Austrian sentiment during the war.

De Gasperi was an outspoken adversary of the Fascists at that point.

The regime, which celebrated strength and youth

through its myths and youthful, spectacular ceremonies,

was actually hiding its true nature,

which manifested itself through persecution and nighttime ambushes

on dissidents and political opponents.

De Gasperi was also a victim of a serious incident

which took place in November 1926,

when Alcide and his brother Augusto were kidnapped by Fascists from Veneto

and subjected to a kind of political trial.

They only made it out

thanks to the intervention of an MP from Vicenza, Onorevole Marzotto.

But the most challenging time in De Gasperi's relationship with Fascism

was in March 1927.

While travelling to Trieste with his wife,

he was arrested on the train in Florence carrying a fake ID,

on the charge of attempted clandestine emigration.

The trial resulted in a first sentence to four years of imprisonment.

On appeal, the sentence was reduced to two years and six months.

SPECIAL COURT

His months in prison were hard,

as shown by the letters he wrote to his wife,

which revealed the man,

with his doubts, feelings and worries, but also his certainties.

In the summer of 1927, he wrote:

"I'm not worried about myself,

but the thought of my loved ones scares me.

Sometimes I feel a bit of remorse.

If someone said: 'He deserved it,

he shouldn't have sacrificed his family for politics',

I'd have to wonder if I could have done otherwise.

But I don't think so.

My conscience imposed it.

As did my beliefs and my dignity,

my respect for myself,

the loyalty to my country and my life."

After a few months in prison,

De Gasperi was transferred for health reasons

to detention at the Ciancarelli Clinic,

in the building shown here, which is used for other purposes today.

Following his appeal for pardon, he was released in July 1928.

In the meantime, a major historic event was taking place.

February 11th 1929

was a cold, rainy day.

Thousands of people with open umbrellas

waited in St. Peter's Square, and probably all over Italy,

for the event to take place.

Cavalier Benito Mussolini, on behalf of the Italian State,

and Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Secretary of State of the Holy See,

signed an agreement that would end the long-standing conflict

between Italy and the Catholic Church.

De Gasperi was an attentive observer at the event.

He recognized in the agreement between Pius XI and Mussolini

the advantages the Church could gain from the new legal framework

and from its relationship with the Italian State,

but couldn't deny his disappointment with the manner and timing

of a moment that Catholics had long been waiting for.

He was afraid that a compromise between the Church and the State

would strengthen the regime and its culture.

Once released from jail,

De Gasperi was kept under close surveillance by the police.

Almost defying the Fascist regime,

he was offered a chance to work at the Vatican Library.

From April 1929, at eight o' clock in the morning every day,

De Gasperi walked through the library's door.

The job, which he needed to support himself and his family,

was offered to him following an intervention from Bishop Endrici

and some friends.

It was a difficult period for De Gasperi, as shown by his own signature.

He drew a kind of a diagram where he relived his 30-year career.

It was an analysis of his career from 1906 onwards,

the time of his rise,

which was interrupted by his sudden fall between 1925 and 1929.

From Secretary of the Italian People's Party

to a temp at the Vatican Library,

for 1,000, and later 1,500 lira a month,

holding the modest post of cataloguer.

In fact, the new job allowed him to get out of confinement,

to interact with figures from the Italian and international Catholic worlds,

as well as scholars and men from the Roman Church.

The periodical L'Illustrazione vaticana

entrusted him with the column Quindicina internazionale.

Under the pseudonym of Spectator,

from 1933 to 1938 he was given the opportunity to comment

on the main international political events

during those turbulent times in European history,

from the rise of Nazism

to the Spanish Civil War and the Austrian crisis,

to the conflicts that foreshadowed the outbreak of the Second World War.

"The modern, centralizing state is terrible,"

he wrote on August, 1st 1936,

when his duty required him to challenge its wrath.

During Bismarck's time in Germany, Catholics appealed to the law

and had the comfort of global conscience.

Now, a plea for help to foreign countries was considered high treason,

so much so that German Catholics

had to remain quiet, suffer and swallow their bitterness.

Towards the end of the 30's,

the post of Assistant to Chief Librarian became available.

De Gasperi was offered the position

and he continued working with his usual commitment.

Under the pseudonym of Rerum Scriptorum, he published a series of historical essays

on the affairs of the Social Catholic movements,

especially in Germany and Austria.

His goal was to keep a political tradition and culture alive

and prevent its going extinct

in the conscience of the Italian and European Catholic worlds,

at a time when the totalitarian ideology seemed to try and erase any sign

that the Christian civilization had left on the Old Continent's history.

Upon the development of such an ideology, the Second World War broke out.

Influenced by Hitler's initial success,

Mussolini, after a nine-month neutrality,

brought Italy into the war on June 10th, 1940.

The war was first fought in the Western Alps against France,

which was already on its knees following its defeats to Germany.

Then the conflict, for Italy too,

spread from Eastern Africa to the whole Mediterranean basin,

and as far as Russia.

During World War II and the collapse of Fascism,

De Gasperi was at the forefront of the reconstruction of Italian democracy

and in the reorganisation of political Catholicism.

Rome, during the tragic months of 1943 and 1944,

experienced moments of great tension.

The bombing of San Lorenzo, the fall of Mussolini,

the Nazi occupation, the Resistance,

the Via Rasella attack, and the Fosse Ardeatine massacre.

Therefore, De Gasperi also went into hiding.

In July 1943, the Vatican Library allowed him

to take a leave of absence.

After September 8th, he took refuge in the Lateran Palace

where other anti-Fascists were also hiding,

including Bonomi, Ruini, Saragat and Nenni.

While in hiding, he kept in touch with his Catholic friends

and laid the foundations for the new party, Christian Democracy.

De Gasperi was 64 years old.

The joy of the liberation and the end of the war

was soon replaced by hardship and the issue of reconstruction.

Italy, like most of Europe, was on its last legs.

The entire national heritage was reduced to a third.

In December 1945,

for the first time in Italian political history,

a representative from a Christian party

was taking over the government's leadership.

Succeeding the government led by Ferruccio Parri,

De Gasperi supported the liquidation of governments,

an expression of the Resistance and the National Liberation Committees

which didn't compromise the harmony among anti-Fascist political forces.

It was a solution that was supported by Togliatti,

who hoped for a broad coalition between the mass parties

with a view to national unity

geared towards the Republic and a progressive democracy.

The major issues on the table required a large majority.

It was necessary to choose between the monarchy and the Republic,

to draw the lines of the new democratic state

and draft the new constitution,

settle the consequences of the war on the international level

through the peace treaty

and to guide the new Italian foreign policy.

De Gasperi handled, with great skill and sense of state,

the outcome of the institutional referendum

and the transition from monarchy to Republic.

In the face of King Umberto's resistance

and the Court of Cassation's delay in announcing the results,

the President of the Council calmly and firmly

forced the monarchy to accept the outcome

and persuaded the King to leave Italy without any dramatic gestures,

avoiding reactions that could pose a threat to public order.

We need to believe and accept, totally and sincerely,

that the matters of government and State

are resolved by the vote

and that the vote is binding for everyone,

except, of course, for the supreme principles of morality.

That's what a regime of freedom is about.

This awareness and decorum

will determine whether the Republic, which is the most perfect,

but also the most difficult system of self-governance,

will be lively and strong.

Having solved the institutional issue,

De Gasperi tackled international problems

and in particular, settling the consequences of the war.

It was necessary to get Italy out of the dead end

it had ended up in from the ruinous Fascist war exploits.

It was necessary to get Italy back into an international setting,

but also to overcome the hostility of the victorious countries' leaders,

who met in Yalta in February 1945

to lay the foundations of the new post-war international order

which would lead to the division of the world into opposing blocs.

As I take the floor before this world assembly,

I can feel that everything...

apart from your personal courtesy,

is against me.

It is my particular qualification as your former enemy...

which makes you view me as a defendant,

and I've been summoned here

when the most prominent among you have already drawn your conclusions

after long and laborious debates.

In De Gasperi's speech,

there's an idea of a just, non-punitive peace,

based on the values of political liberty, of democracy and freedom from any need.

The idea of an international community based on cooperation and the rule of law,

instead of strength and military and financial power.

You called me to London on September 18th, 1945,

and I relinquished the natural frontier of the Alps

in order to satisfy rightful Yugoslav ethnic claims,

and I proposed to you the line which President Wilson had traced

when, on April 23rd, 1919 at the Peace Conference in Paris,

he bid for "a just and equitable decision

which wouldn't draw an everlasting distinction

between victors and vanquished".

There's a refusal of nationalist hatred,

of oppression and of the pagan myth of race,

which had poisoned life in Europe in the '30s

and had led to the Second World War.

On September 5th, 1946, in Paris,

De Gasperi tackled the issue of Alto Adige

and the German-speaking ethnic minority in South Tyrol

by signing an agreement with Austrian foreign minister Gruber.

The agreement guaranteed the German-speaking population in Bolzano

the safeguarding of their ethnic character and cultural and economic development,

their administrative independence,

with the birth of the region Trentino-Alto Adige.

Though late,

the Los von Trient demanded by German and Ladin-speaking minorities

was put in place.

Actually, the Trentino-Alto Adige region exists only on paper.

In fact, the province of Bolzano is completely independent from Trento,

although discontent still remains.

But the fact is

that at the root of the first agreement promoted by De Gasperi

was the vision of a New Europe

based on the coexistence and the peaceful cooperation

of different well-meaning ethnic groups and cultures.

With De Gasperi's foreign policy choices during those years,

he gradually got closer to the United States.

From January 9th to 11th, 1947,

De Gasperi went to America with three goals.

Obtaining a loan of 100 million dollars from the Export-Import Bank,

strengthening the Italian prestige in the United States,

increasing US interest in Italy's future

in order to get Italy back into the international setting

and into the political arena of Western democracies.

I arrived in Washington after a long trip,

but I now find myself among friends.

I think this display of friendship and fraternity

will also inspire the debates

that will take place between the governments,

so that the journey will...

promote a resumption of our friendly relations

and a strengthening of those relations

in order to build a better world.

In America, De Gasperi met with President Truman

and Secretary of State Byrnes.

He asked the United States to trust in the new Italy.

The question of the participation of the left wing in government

was one of the most delicate issues facing De Gasperi

when he returned to Italy.

Around the middle of 1947,

De Gasperi thought the time had come for a distinction of roles.

The work of the constituent Assembly had overcome the most difficult obstacles,

including the issue of the relationship between the State and the Holy See

regulated by Article 7, which refers to the Lateran Pacts

as the solution to the problem.

Furthermore, the unity of the left-wing parties

was affected by the split of the Socialist Party,

with the exit of the Social Democrats led by Giuseppe Saragat,

who refused the strict alliance with the Italian Communist Party

promoted by Socialist leader Pietro Nenni.

In May 1947,

De Gasperi, with great political skill and without any shocks,

instigated the exit of the left wing from the government

and welcomed representatives of the Liberal Democrat tradition

such as Luigi Einaudi,

a prestigious figure in the field of economics

and a supporter of Liberalism and market economy.

CONSTITUTION PROMULGATED

It was thanks to De Gasperi

that the Social Communists of Nenni and Togliatti

decided to oppose the government, but not the State.

SOCIALIST UNITY

On April 18th, 1948,

during the elections for the first Republican legislature,

De Gasperi's Christian Democracy stood before the voters

as the only force that was capable

of effectively counteracting the united front of the left wing.

The confrontation at the elections wasn't based on the parties' political agendas.

In the eyes of the voters, a choice between two systems was at stake.

Soviet totalitarianism, with the risk of subjection to Moscow,

and Western parliamentary democracy.

Two models, two economic systems were on the scale.

The clergy entered the field in favour of Christian Democracy

along with Catholic Action organisations

and, in particular, the Civic Committees led by Luigi Gedda.

The 1948 elections marked an outstanding success for Christian Democracy,

managed by De Gasperi from a centrist perspective,

a political formula of an alliance with secular centrist parties,

Liberals, Republicans and Social Democrats,

which would guarantee a gradualist reform policy

and the defence of the democratic system

against the adventurist right and left wings.

JOBS FOR THE UNEMPLOYED

The centrist years were ones of hard work for De Gasperi.

Four consecutive governments from May 1948 to August 1953

faced major political and social problems,

such as the public order emergency and issues

following the attack on Togliatti on July 14th, 1948

and the consequent disruption of trade union unity.

But the De Gasperi governments also began a reformist policy

leading to the establishment of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno in August 1949

and to the agrarian reform law of 1950-51,

which supported the liquidation of latifundia

and the development of smaller rural properties.

The INA-Casa Plan was also drafted,

promoted by Labour Minister Amintore Fanfani,

providing a seven-year public housing programme.

The reforestation plan and the construction site plan

aimed at solving the labour problem

along with a major vocational training programme.

This policy had the virtue of completing the reconstruction of Italy

and its industrial apparatus

by promoting the recovery of economic life,

leading to unprecedented development within Italy.

The Cold War and the Iron Curtain

had divided the world into two opposing blocs.

There was a need for a clear choice and a well-defined foreign policy,

which De Gasperi identified by signing Italy up to the Atlantic Pact,

endorsed by Parliament

after a long, intense and harsh parliamentary debate.

We established international organisations

that are able to arbitrate, that can reconcile and arbitrate,

and we have therefore committed

all nations to this peaceful procedure.

Today we can say that a just war

can only be a war against aggression.

War as a defence against attacks, and nothing else.

Any war that can be avoided is unjust.

In the early '50s, De Gasperi was mainly focused on Europe.

Together with Frenchman Robert Schuman and German Konrad Adenauer,

he's considered one of the founding fathers of a united Europe.

Shortly afterwards, in May 1949,

Italy was called upon to participate in the Council of Europe.

The spring of 1951,

with the Italian-French meeting in Santa Margherita Ligure,

attended by De Gasperi, Sforza, Schuman and Pleven,

officially marked the reconciliation between France and Italy,

and aimed at promoting new European institutions.

A youth demonstration acclaimed the participants,

celebrating a united Europe and a European constituent assembly.

On June 20th, 1951,

Italy joined the European Coal and Steel Community,

which marked the formation of the first European body.

But De Gasperi was looking beyond organisations.

He was convinced of the necessity to penetrate the citizens' conscience

with the idea of a larger community, capable of surpassing ancient borders.

The European Community

means peace has been restored between Germany and France.

It means a modest, but permanent function for Italy

in European cooperation.

It means opening a common labour market

and gradually accessing shared resources.

It means the compression, if not the end, of national self-interest

and the release of popular energies.

His trips to the various European capitals for meetings, gatherings and speeches

in favour of European economic and political unification

became increasingly frequent.

In May 1952 in Paris,

he signed the agreement to launch the European Defence Community.

He went to Germany in September.

He was the first head of government to go to Germany

after the end of the war.

The mayor of the City of Aachen, Mr. Maas, welcomed him

and awarded him with the Charlemagne Prize,

established in 1949

to honour the figures

who contributed to promoting the idea of Europe and of European institutions.

The medal he received, depicting Charlemagne,

was among his most cherished possessions

and he later expressed the desire to have it on his coffin

at the time of his death.

In Strasbourg, he was later elected President of the ECSC Assembly,

succeeding Belgian Paul-Henri Spaak.

The precariousness of the centrist governments in the early '50s

and the risk of long-term ungovernability of the country,

persuaded De Gasperi that he should revise,

with a view to the June elections in 1953,

the electoral law,

and introduce, after a fierce battle in Parliament,

a correction to the proportional system

by awarding the party groupings winning the absolute majority of votes

with 65 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

The election results proved De Gasperi wrong.

Albeit by just a few votes,

the mechanism of the new electoral law didn't work.

The opposition called it a "fraud law".

When De Gasperi tried to form a new government after the elections,

he faced serious difficulties.

On July 15th, 1953, the Chamber denied the vote of confidence.

After seven and a half uninterrupted years

leading the Italian government,

De Gasperi was forced to take a backseat.

Giuseppe Pella succeeded him,

with a monochrome government that also won the monarchists' votes.

The old leader's fate was sealed,

not just in the government, but also in his own party.

In June 1954,

at the Christian Democracy Congress in Naples,

De Gasperi decided to give way to the second generation of politicians,

particularly to the Democratic Initiative wing

led by Amintore Fanfani.

The transfer of power took place on July 16th.

De Gasperi went to rest at his summer house in Sella,

surrounded by his family and a few close friends.

He was tormented by the difficulty of creating a new European organisation,

the European Defence Community,

particularly due to the resistance from France.

In the mountains and meadows of his own Trentino,

which he never stopped looking at from the window,

one of his favourite mushroom gathering walks

was the uphill meadow bordering the woods,

a walk we now take with his youngest daughter Paola and her husband.

We stop at the wooden crucifix that De Gasperi installed on the path

for his quiet moments of prayer.

They were his final moments of rest.

Already weakened for some time by a late-treated azotemia,

De Gasperi died in Sella on August 19th, 1954 at the age of 73.

His death marked the end of a country that was still rural

in mentality and tradition.

A country

that from the material and moral rubble of a tragic, catastrophic war

had began to work and rebuild again.

A country that returned to democratic battles with a fresh pair of eyes,

with a tension and a willpower, beyond the various ideologies,

to contribute to rebuilding robust institutions

where people would have a say,

where their needs and desires would be listened to.

De Gasperi was a prudent and confident leader of this country

which had regained its place in the international community

and was leading the construction of a new, united, democratic Europe.

Behind his figure, which could seem cold and introverted,

hid a man full of humanity,

of very tender feelings for his land, his people, his family.

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