Every year, like an automatic reflex, there is the usual partisan polemic about 25 April. This time the trigger was the government’s call for ‘sobriety’ in celebrating it, given the mourning over the death of Pope Francis.

But one wonders: sobriety compared to what? It is not that 25 April is an out-of-control festival. It is a day of parades, remembrance, words. Let’s face it: calling for ‘sobriety’ seemed like an attempt to downplay the significance of the day, to blunt its impact. As if it were too much. As if it disturbed.

The truth is that every 25 April Italy realises that it has never matured. Right and left.
Yes, even a certain left wing has played its part in making it divisive. It has used it as a terrain for ideological clashes, it has narrated it as an anniversary ‘of its own’, often with moral monopoly tones. In doing so, it has contributed to delegitimising it as everyone’s holiday. On the other hand, the right has put its own spin on it: with ambiguities, revisionism, and that constant winking at the quarter-hour of daily fascism that dwells in too many Italians. The result? In Italy there is not – and perhaps never has been – a true shared republican spirit.

And while people argue about the tone of the celebration, they forget what they are celebrating. 25 April is not a festival of peace. It is a celebration of liberation and of armed, tough, violent resistance. And that’s OK. Because there is a just violence, that of those who fight to free themselves from an oppressive regime. Our partisan grandfathers took up arms to drive out an occupier and overthrow a regime, together with the Allies. Today, when the same right is claimed by Ukrainians against the Russian invader, many turn away. And they do not feel the responsibility to be – we – the Allies that the oppressed people so desperately need. As if resistance is only right when it belongs to the past.

25 April is a feast day that should not be sweetened, it should not be de-emphasised, neither with a call for sobriety, nor with pacifist rhetoric. It must be understood, defended, and – if possible – restored to all and to its true nature.