1971

14 December, Marina di Pisa
Giovanni Gamalero Persoglio, 30 years old, university student

On the night between Saturday 13 February and Sunday 14 February 1971, a 29-year-old Pisan university student majoring in engineering, Giovanni Persoglio Gamalero, returned home in the company of his wife Graziella Leandri from an evening at the disco, at around 00.50, on the seafront of Marina di Pisa aboard his Alfa Romeo 1750 car, he stopped to check the origin of a wisp of smoke that he had seen coming out of Aldo Meucci’s butcher’s shop. Once he got out of the car he was overwhelmed by a strong explosion caused by a bomb: various metal fragments penetrated his entire body, in particular the abdomen and the right thigh, where a metal fragment, the largest and most blunt, tore his body cleanly. femoral artery. Help was called by some young people, who were in the nearby Piazza Sardegna, and by his wife who remained miraculously unharmed. The emergency services, which arrived with a considerable delay (almost two hours), could not help but confirm the death during transport to the hospital.
A few months later the investigations restarted thanks to the Archetto crime. The latter brought out the key witnesses of the Marina attack. On 21 May Michele Montomoli, a chemistry student and frequent visitor to the L’Archetto tavern, declared to the investigators that bomb attacks were often discussed at the L’Archetto and that on the evening of Friday 12 February 1971 Scarpellini had told him that in Pisa too a series of attacks were planned against fascist traders who, during the last strikes, had kept their businesses open. In particular, he had given him the name of the butcher’s shop in Marina di Pisa, and that he would have passed the explosive device through the meshes of the shutter. The day following February 12, Scarpellini confirmed that the attack was for that night and during a dinner he invited him to participate in it, as a chemist. He told him that the bomb would have been planted by three people, including an explosives expert, and that they would go to the site in the car of one of the three. The next morning, Sunday 14th, when he learned that a bomb had exploded in Marina and that a man had lost his life, he went to the Archetto and when he asked if he had actually taken part in the attack, Scarpellini, spreading his arms, said replied: “Yes, unfortunately that’s how it happened.” Subsequently they also spoke with Luciano Serragli who replied: “The path to revolution is long and full of blood.” At the end of June Tecla Puccini declared that the attack had been organized by Alessandro Corbara.
Alessandro Corbara and Vincenzo Scarpellini were sentenced to eight years in prison for the manslaughter of Giovanni Persoglio and one year and six months for the possession of weapons and explosives. According to the sentence, in Corbara’s diary: «the birth and advance of revolutionary groups is greeted with exultation; we talk about the Vatican and American influence on our political and social structure, the DC, the center-left government and the Sifar affair; it is argued that «when the very foundations of the already poor constitutional order are touched, one cannot fight only peacefully.». A few months earlier, in the Proletarian Left Struggle Sheets published by Renato Curcio and considered the ideological and operational antechamber of the Red Brigades, one could read: «… The organization of violence is a necessity of the class struggle… Against the institutions that administer our exploitation, against the laws and justice of the masters, the most determined and conscious part of the struggling proletariat has already begun to fight to build a new legality, new power. And to build his organization.” It is not difficult to detect a harmony between the documents that testify to the birth of terrorist groups in the north and the scenarios described in the papers seized in Pisa in Corbara’s office.