1970
July 22nd
The Gioia Tauro massacre

These are the days of protest and political violence. Reggio Calabria claims the right to be the regional capital, by any means, at any cost.
“Especially in the popular neighborhoods – a fugitive Ciccio Franco told Oriana Fallaci – there were many young people who believed that Reggio could be defended by the left or centre-left parties. And, after the position taken by the left and centre-left parties against Reggio, these young people felt they had to review their position politically too. Many, today, are fascists simply because they believe that the battle of Reggio is interpreted faithfully only by fascists.”
For months the city will be barricaded, at times paralyzed by strikes and devastated by clashes with the police and bomb attacks. Calm will be restored only after 10 months of siege with the disturbing image of tanks on the city’s seafront.
Ciccio Franco – the main inspirer of the revolt – was elected from the ranks of the MSI to the Senate in 1972. In the same year, in October, the metalworking unions of CGIL, CISL and UIL (together with the construction unions and the Federbraccianti CGIL) organized a large demonstration of solidarity alongside Calabrian workers.
Around 5pm on 22 July 1970, at the beginning of the Executioner’s revolt and less than a year after the Piazza Fontana massacre, near the Gioia Tauro station, the Freccia del Sud train heading from Palermo to Turin derailed, causing the death of six people (Rita Cacicia, Rosa Fassari, Andrea Gangemi, Nicoletta Mazzocchio, Letizia Concetta Palumbo and Adriana Maria Vassallo) and the wounding of approximately 70 others.
In the first phase of the investigation, it was believed that the event was due to the structural failure of a carriage of the train (the police commissioner Emilio Santillo – who rushed to the scene – identified the causes of the derailment with “the unbolting of carriage no. 2 of the body of the ninth car”); later, to the negligence of the staff who was driving him. Only many years later did definitive sentences ascertain that it had instead been a bomb attack.
“A forgotten mystery – Carlo Lucarelli will define it – So dark, so mysterious, that for a long time no one knew anything about it, almost dissolved, covered by the black mists of many other great Mysteries of Italy”.
The hypothesis of the attack is put forward and supported by most of the national press (the journalist Mario Righetti of the Corriere della Sera supports this thesis after just three days, soon supported by other newspapers; in Avanti they even went as far as quoting the alleged discovery of another explosive on 7 August), but it will still take many years and many deaths to arrive at a guiltily partial, not complete truth, yet to be defined.