A piece of street art appeared in
Rome on Monday, the eve of the day when the country commemorates
the liberation from Fascism and Nazi occupation in 1945, overtly
chastising Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa for recent highly
controversial comments on Italy's Fascist past.
'My Partisan Grandmother is Still Angry' by 34-year-old street
artist Laika from Rome shows an elderly woman wearing a red
neckerchief chasing the right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI)
exponent with a rolling pin.
The mural is in the Garbatella district, one of the symbols of
the Resistance in Rome.
"This Republic was born with the blood of our partisan
grandparents who fought against fascism: any attempt to
rehabilitate that period is a criminal act against those who
lost their lives, those who were persecuted in concentration
camps, those who suffered," Laika explained.
"History cannot be rewritten," she said.
"Memory must be preserved, protected: it is the task of the new
generations to maintain this commitment so that what has been
does not happen again."
La Russa drew criticism on Friday after La Repubblica newspaper
quoted him as saying "the is no reference to anti-Fascism in the
Italian Constitution".
The comments, which he later said were incorrectly reported,
sparked a barrage of criticism from the centre-left opposition
amid calls for him to resign.
Elly Schlein, the leader of opposition centre-left Democratic
Party (PD) was among the first to hit back.
"He said anti-Fascism isn't in the Constitution, we say that
anti-Fascism is our Constitution," Schlein told a party meeting
at Riano, near Rome.
The National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI), former
Constitutional Court Presidents Giovanni Maria Flick and Gustavo
Zagrebelsky and numerous opposition politicians also voiced
their dissent.
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