In 74 years of history, Italy has had 12 presidents of the Republic and shortly – on 24 January – parliamentarians and regional delegates will meet to elect the thirteenth. Before finding out who will go up to Colle after Sergio Mattarella, let's look back and retrace (in summary) the road that brought us here.
From the first provisional president, De Nicola, to the great economist Einaudi, from the first Christian Democrat Gronchi to the first Social Democrat Saragat, passing through Segni's illness. And again Leone, perhaps the most controversial president, Pertini, certainly the most loved, and then Cossiga "the Picconatore", to finally arrive at the most recent names: Scalfaro, Ciampi, Napolitano (1 and 2). This is who the presidents of the Italian Republic have been up to now.
1) ENRICO DE NICOLA 1946-1948
Liberal jurist, Enrico De Nicola was elected provisional head of state on 28 June 1946 by the Constituent Assembly, thanks to the agreement between Christian Democrats, Socialists and Communists.
On 1948 January 12 he assumed the title of President of the Italian Republic, keeping it until the following XNUMX May.
In the history of our country, De Nicola was the only person to have held four of the five major offices in the state, having also obtained the presidency of the Senate, the Chamber and the Constitutional Court in his career.
2) LUIGI EINAUDI 1948-1955
Economist, of liberal extraction like his predecessor, Luigi Einaudi was Minister of the Budget in the fourth De Gasperi government (1947-1948), the first from which the left was ousted. In those months he carried out a very tough economic manoeuvre, which acted on three levels: fiscal tightening, devaluation of the lira and credit restriction. In this way various objectives were achieved – a drop in inflation, a recovery of monetary stability, a consolidation of the state budget – but the operation had heavy social costs, above all on the unemployment front.
After the year spent in the Treasury, Einaudi was elected President of the Republic, a position he held in the first phase of centrism, when the Christian Democrats governed with liberals, republicans and social democrats. These were the years of the agrarian reform (for the expropriation and the division of a part of the large landed properties), of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, of the Fanfani law on the financing of social housing and of the Vanoni reform, which introduced the obligation of the annual declaration of incomes.
3) GIOVANNI GRONCHI 1955-1962
Former Undersecretary of Industry in the Mussolini government, Giovanni Gronchi was Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce in the Bonomi II, Bonomi III and De Gasperi I governments, to then become the first Christian Democrat to be elected President of the Republic. As an exponent of the DC left, he was supported by a part of the party against the indications of the secretariat and also obtained the support of socialists and communists.
Gronchi's presidency coincided almost perfectly with the years of the Italian economic miracle, the culminating phase of the growth process that began after 1950. In the same seven-year period, however, the crisis produced by the Tambroni government also took place, which - supported by the Italian Social Movement - in 1960 he authorized the MSIs to hold their national congress in Genoa, triggering a series of popular uprisings which caused dozens of deaths. Tambroni resigned after being disavowed by the DC, which formed a new government (Fanfani III) thanks to the abstention of the PSI, thus inaugurating the season of the centre-left.
4) ANTONIO SIGNS 1962-1964
Segni's presidency lasted only two and a half years and was the second shortest in the history of the Republic after that of De Nicola. His resignation came on 6 December 1964 for health reasons: four months earlier, in fact, Segni had been struck by cerebral thrombosis during a heated discussion with Saragat and Moro. The contents of the interview remained secret.
That summer, rumors had spread of a planned coup d'état (Piano Solo) promoted by the number one of the Carabinieri, General De Lorenzo, who was particularly close to Segni. According to Giorgio Galli and Indro Montanelli, however, the Head of State did not aim to implement a coup, but only to agitate its bogeyman for political purposes.
5) GIUSEPPE SARAGAT 1964-1971
Giuseppe Saragat was the first social democratic President of the Republic and the votes of the communists were decisive for his election. Historical leader of the Italian Democratic Socialist Party, before going up to Colle Saragat he had been president of the Constituent Assembly, vice president of the Council and foreign minister. His seven-year term was part of the "organic center-left" (Dc, Pri, Psdi and Psi), he experienced the youth protests of 1968 and the hot autumn of 1969, but also the great reforms of 1970: the establishment of the Regions, the launch of the workers' statute and the green light for the divorce law, later confirmed by the 1974 referendum.
Also in 1970 the coup attempt organized by Junio Valerio Borghese took place. The plan – canceled by Borghese himself while it was being executed, for reasons never clarified – involved the capture and kidnapping of Saragat, an operation to be carried out under the care of Licio Gelli, venerable master of the P2 Masonic Lodge.
6) JOHN LEONE 1971-1978
After leading two one-color and "seaside" governments under the DC brand (1963 and 1968), in 1971 Giovanni Leone was elected to the Quirinale by a centre-right majority, at the end of the longest procedure ever (23 ballots in 15 days). His presidency largely went through one of the darkest pages of republican history, that of the years of lead, with the attacks of 1974 (in Brescia, in Piazza della Loggia, and on the Italicus train), the season of national solidarity, the kidnapping and the killing of Aldo Moro.
Accused of opaque behavior from a fiscal point of view and connivance with business groups (although his involvement in the Lockheed scandal was never proven), Leone resigned in June 1978, just over six months before the end of his mandate.
7) SANDRO PERTINI 1978-1985
An anti-fascist persecuted by the regime and a leading figure in the Resistance, at the age of 82 the former partisan Sandro Pertini was elected with the votes of the whole constitutional arc. He collected 82,3% of the votes, a still unbeaten record, and thus became the first socialist to hold the office of President of the Republic. His mandate was characterized by a personal imprint that quickly gained him widespread popularity, so much so that many still remember him as the "most loved president by the Italians".
Several moments of his seven-year period that have left traces in the collective memory: the emotion for the Bologna massacre of 2 August 1980, the indignation at the delays in relief efforts after the earthquake in Irpinia of November 23 of the same year, but also the celebration at the Santiago Bernabeu in 1982, when Italy defeated West Germany in the final of the soccer World Cup.
8) FRANCESCO COSSIGA 1985-1992
The Christian Democrat Francesco Cossiga was elected by a very large majority at the height of the five-party era (DC, Pri, Pli, Psi and Psdi), becoming the youngest ever Head of State (58 years old).
In 1991 he suddenly changed the style of behavior he followed in the first five years of his mandate and became the protagonist of a series of controversies both with the parties (including the DC) and with other state bodies (especially the Superior Council of the Judiciary, accused by Cossiga to assume powers that did not belong to him). The vehemence of his utterances earned him the nickname "Piconatore". In reality he never recovered from the shock of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro during his management of the Ministry of the Interior.
In February 1992 he dissolved the Chambers slightly ahead of the expiry of the legislature. He resigned on April 28 of that same year, two months before the end of the seven-year term.
9) OSCAR LUIGI SCALFARO 1992-1999
Magistrate, parliamentarian since the Constituent Assembly years, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro was called to represent the positive tradition of a political class seriously discredited by the Tangentopoli scandal, which had broken out a few months earlier. Not only that: while the votes for the Quirinale were underway, the country was shocked by the Capaci massacre, in which the magistrate Giovanni Falcone lost his life. Less than two months later, the mafia also killed Paolo Borsellino.
That same year Scalfaro entrusted the government to Giuliano Amato, who avoided the bankruptcy of the state with one of the most severe maneuvers in republican history (that of the forced levy on current accounts). In addition to the birth of the Second Republic and Silvio Berlusconi's "entry into the field", with whom he clashed at the time of the first government of the former Cavaliere (1994-1995), Scalfaro also saw Italy's entry into the euro .
10) CARLO AZEGLIO CIAMPI 1999-2006
However, the name closest to the single currency is that of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who – after having been governor of Bank of Italy from 79 to 93 and prime minister in 93-94 – was also minister of the Treasury in the first Prodi government. In that capacity he signed the 1997 maneuver, which in one year reduced the deficit from 7 to 2,7% of GDP, allowing Italy to respect the Maastricht parameters and thus enter the leading group of countries adhering to the EUR.
Ciampi arrived at the Quirinale on the proposal of Walter Veltroni and his election took place on the first ballot. As head of state, he opposed the idea that Italy could participate in the war in Iraq outside a framework of international cooperation: a different position from that of the head of government, Silvio Berlusconi, who is in favor of a total alliance with the US. In those years, other reasons for friction between the Colle and Palazzo Chigi were the Gasparri law on telecommunications and reform of the judicial system by minister Castelli, both referred by Ciampi to the Chambers.
11) GIORGIO NAPOLITANO 2006-2013 AND 2013-2015
Giorgio Napolitano has so far been the only President of the Republic to obtain a second term, which however lasted less than two years. An exponent of the PCI's "improvement" current, in 1978 he was the first Italian Communist leader to receive a visa to go to the United States. He held the posts of Speaker of the Chamber during the 1992 crisis and Minister of the Interior in the first Prodi government, when he promoted a law to regulate migratory flows.
As Head of State he first faced the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, then that of the European sovereign debt that began in 2010. In April 2013, in the Chamber, Napolitano reproached the parliamentarians and regional delegates in a voice broken with emotion they had been able to choose his successor.
12) SERGIO MATTARELLA 2015-2022
Brother of Piersanti, president of the Sicilian Region killed by the mafia in 1980, Sergio Mattarella has held the position of minister several times and, between 2011 and 2015, that of judge of the Constitutional Court.
He was the speaker of the electoral reform which, acknowledging the outcome of the 1993 referendum, introduced the majority for 75% of the seats. The law, renamed Mattarellium by the political scientist Giovanni Sartori, it was used for the political elections of 1994, 1996 and 2001.
As President of the Republic he appointed a life senator: Liliana Segre, Auschwitz survivor and Holocaust witness.
