Abstract
Autore:
Colombo Arturo
Titolo:
"Gaetano salvemini fra meridionalismo e federalismo"
In his essay about “Gaetano Salvemini between “meridionalism” (a policy which favours southern Italian regions) and federalism”, the Author takes first of all into consideration the Southern Issue, a topic Salvemini (1873-1957) faced since the last years of the XIX century, believing that solving Southern Italy backwardness and underdevelopment problems does not just imply a “very broad and radical devolution”, capable of depriving the Central Government of “instruction, financial management, police and army” in order to grant all of these competences to regions and municipalities“Southern Italy – Salvemini says – needs to get rid of all of the shames that oppress itself”: hence the need of implementing federalism (not just separatism). Forced to leave Italy when Mussolini and fascism paved the way to dictatorship, Salvemini recovered in the USA, yet continuing to condemn “the national sovereignty holy idol”.
When, at the end of the war, he comes back to Italy (that he appoints – as he writes in the weekly magazine “Il Mondo” – “a muddled Italy”), he advocates the urgency of giving birth to a democratic system that, even through gradualism, not only will have to assure the local autonomies, but will have to be able to make effective that real federalism system which, by now and since many years, distinguishes two democratic political systems, such as Switzerland and USA.
