Franco Serantini

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Franco (Francesco) Serantini (Cagliari, 16 July 1951 – Pisa, 7 May 1972) was an Italian anarchist.

Biography[]

Franco Serantini was abandoned at an orphanage, where he remained until the age of two when he was adopted by a childless couple. After the death of his adoptive mother he was given in foster care to his maternal grandparents, with whom he lived, in Campobello di Licata in Sicily, until the age of nine when he was transferred back to an assistance institution in Cagliari.

In 1968 he was sent to the Istituto per l'osservazione dei minori (Institute for the Observation of Minors) in Florence and from there - albeit without the slightest reason of criminal disorder - confined to the "Pietro Thouar" reformatory in Pisa in a regime of semi-freedom, consisting of eating and sleeping in the institute. In Pisa, after the middle school at the Fibonacci state school, he attended the school of corporate accounting. His studies and new friendships caused him to see the world differently and to move toward left-wing politics, spending time at the headquarters of the Italian Communist Youth Federation and Italian Socialist Youth Federation, passing through Lotta Continua until joining, in the autumn of 1971, an anarchist group in Pisa named after Giuseppe Pinelli.

Incarceration[]

Together with other militants he was engaged in the political initiatives of those years, such as the experience of the "Mercato rosso" ("Red Market") in the popular district of the CEP, in many political actions and, finally, in the heated discussion that Pietro Valpreda's protest candidacy for a seat in parliament had triggered in the anarchist movement. On 5 May 1972 he participated in the presidium called by Lotta Continua in Pisa against the rally of , politician of the Italian Social Movement. The group was attacked by the police; during one of the charges Serantini came into contact with a group of agents of the Second and Third Platoon of the Third Company of the First Rapid Grouping of Rome, on the Lungarno Gambacorti, and was arrested.

During the night, with a doctor present and subjected to a visit, he denied any kind of illness and refused treatment. Subsequently he was transferred first to a police barracks and then to the where, the next day, he was subjected to an interrogation, during which he manifested a state of general illness that the judge, the prison guards and the prison doctor did not consider serious.

Death and investigation[]

On 7 May, after two days, Serantini was found in a coma in his cell and transported to the prison emergency room. He died at 9:45 a.m.

On the afternoon of the same day the prison authorities applied to the Municipality for authorization to transport and bury the corpse. The office of the Municipality refused, while the news of Serantini's death spread throughout the city. , anti-fascist and militant of the Pisan left, decided together with the lawyer Massei to form a civil party, an action possible with a post-mortem adoption, given that the young man had no relatives. The next day the autopsy took place: the lawyer Giovanni Sorbi, leaving the morgue of the Hospital of Santa Chiara, declared:

It was a trauma to attend the autopsy, to see the boy I knew dissected. A body massacred, in the chest, shoulders, head, arms. All soaked in blood. There wasn't even a small untouched surface. I spent a long night of nightmares.

His funeral, on 9 May 1972, was attended by large crowds. On 13 May, in Piazza San Silvestro, after a demonstration called by Lotta Continua with a final rally by Gianni Landi for anarchists and Adriano Sofri for Lotta Continua, a plaque was affixed in memory of Franco Serantini at the entrance of the Palazzo Thouar, his last residence. Events and initiatives to remember Serantini continue to take place each year. In Turin a school is dedicated to him, in 1979 in Pisa the was founded and in 1982, in Piazza San Silvestro, a monument donated by the quarrymen of Carrara was inaugurated.

The story of Serantini remained in the public eye due to newspaper press campaigns and the book by , Il sovversivo. Vita e morte dell'anarchico Serantini (The subversive. Life and death of the anarchist Serantini), released in 1975 and subsequently reprinted. In 1977 Dr. Alberto Mammoli, doctor of the Don Bosco prison, after being tried and acquitted by the Court with respect to his responsibility towards the prisoner, was the victim of a revenge killing by those who held him responsible for the death of Serantini. An armed group that operated in those years, (Revolutionary Action), claimed responsibility.

See also[]

• Anarchism in Italy

Bibliography[]

• "Franco Serantini: Storia di un sovviverso (e di un assassinio di Stato)" [Franco Serantini: Story of a subversive (and of a state assassination)]. (in Italian). Vol. 32, no. 281. May 2002. Retrieved 11 August 2021.

External links[]

• Rete dei Comunisti [Network of Communists] – Pisa (7 May 2016). "Franco Serantini. Un esempio di antifascismo militante contro il fascismo di oggi" [Franco Serantini. An example of militant anti-fascism against the fascism of today]. Contropiano: Giornale Comunista Online (in Italian). Retrieved 11 August 2021.