Centre left makes pilgrimage to Ventotene

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 22 - Much of the Italian centre left, but no party leaders, made a pilgrimage Saturday to Ventotene, the island south of Rome where anti-fascist prisoners and political thinkers Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni in 1941 wrote a manifesto for a federalist Europe that is widely considered a foundational text for the European Union, amid a major row after rightwing Premier Giorgia Meloni told parliament this week that the manifesto "is certainly not my Europe", spurring outrage in the opposition.
    The centre-left delegation left a bouquet of flowers on Spinelli's grave on the former Resistance prison island off Latina in the EU colours of blue and yellow.
    The initiative was promoted by the largest opposition group, the Democratic Party (PD), who were joined by the centrist Italia Viva (IV), the Green-Left Alli.ance (AVS) and More Europe.
    Two other opposition parties, the centrist Azione (Action) and the leftist populist 5-Star Movement (M5S), did not take part.
    "I don't think those who didn't come are against, maybe they had other things to do. I'm happy to be there though", said the head of the PD delegation in the European Parliament Nicola Zingaretti, a former PD leader, who led the event.
    "It shouldn't be seen as a controversy. The important thing is that we all work to try to build a unitary proposal at the end", he added.
    M5S leader and former two-time premier Giuseppe Conte replied: "It's not enough to appeal to Ventotene, we need to fight concretely".
    The Ventotene Manifesto, written as it was by Resistance heroes who helped lead the fight against Mussolini, is regarded as a sacred text on the left and Meloni's attack on it incense the opposition forcing a temporary halt to parliamentary activity.
    Meloni picked out parts of the manifesto which advocated for a federalist dictatorship of the proletariat with the temporary suspension of democracy and the abolition of private property.
    After she was accused of defending fascism, she slammed the left as "illiberal and nostalgic".
    Ventone is today a holiday island like the smaller former prison island of Santo Stefano. With Ponza, Palmarola, Gavi and Zannone, it makes up the Pontine Islands, so called after the Pontine Marshes which Mussolini drained to found Latina, the City of the Duce, and other new towns in the 1930s. (ANSA).