Spadolini and the Carlino, director for 13 years. His teaching: "The newspaper is conscience"

Bologna, May 14, 2025 – Giovanni Spadolini, director of il Resto del Carlino for 13 years, from 1955 to 1968. And his firm idea of ​​' newspaper as conscience ', the deep and mutual esteem with the publisher Attilio Monti , the love for Bologna that will never end – through the relationship with some of its great protagonists from Giorgio Morandi, to Lercaro, Carducci, Minghetti, Tanari, Dozza, Costa – and the powerful thread of his boundless culture, of his being a man of dialogue with a point of reference that has always been the Risorgimento. And again: the emotion of the nomination as senator for life, but also the four unhappy years at Corriere della Sera and the disappointment of not being elected Head of State.

Outlining the figure of Professor Spadolini is extremely difficult, if not impossible, but on the centenary of his birth, the speakers at the conference 'Giovanni Spadolini's Bologna. The years of 'il Resto del Carlino' 1955-1968', organized yesterday by the Spadolini Nuova Antologia Foundation, in collaboration with the Department of History, Cultures and Civilizations of Unibo and the Quotidiano Nazionale , painted a wise portrait of him, never separated from the fate of the newspaper he directed with such passion. Sara Riffeser Monti , editor of the Quotidiano Nazionale, was present. The president of the Foundation, Cosimo Ceccuti , had the task of guiding the conference.

It is the rector Giovanni Molari who recalls the important relationships of Giovanni Spadolini with the University, up to the honorary degree in 1989. The Magnificent underlined "that there is an ever-increasing need for a press that helps to give correct messages and how Spadolini has brought the teaching of free information. The Carlino remains our most important source for information". Also the councilor Daniele Ara , representing the mayor (in Rome for the final of the Italian Cup, ed. ) underlined "how the Carlino helps the citizen debate" and how the figure of Spadolini must always be remembered for "the secular and republican culture".

It was Agnese Pini , director of QN, Carlino, Nazione, Giorno e Luce! who touched on a key point of correct information through a phrase by Spadolini: 'the newspaper as a conscience': "In such a complicated world, we rediscover the value of traditional journalism that reminds us of the meaning of what freedom of information means, a meaning that Spadolini understood in a period recently emerging from years in which this freedom had not existed and had to be reinvented. And today we are in a similar moment with social media ".

Professor Angelo Varni retraces Spadolini’s years in Bologna through the city’s greatest figures, with a special mention of Cardinal Lercaro and Mayor Dozza and, above all, the task he had entrusted to the newspaper: “A wall against totalitarianism ”. Professor Roberto Balzani highlights Spadolini as a “man of dialogue, whose point of reference is always the Risorgimento, at the helm of a newspaper that he wants to be cultured, but read by everyone”.

Antonio Patuelli , instead, adds some personal memories to help understand what the 'reserved Spadolini' was and how, for him, "the maximum freedom was the 13 years at Carlino . The 4 years at Corriere della Sera were an initial illusion and a disappointment later. Spadolini then - he says - began a phase of complexity in 1968 for his individual, cultural, methodological and political vocation. He no longer felt free . He would rediscover his individual leadership in 1981 when he was given the task of forming the government. He received us in the Cavour room of the Senate, I remember it as if it were today. I was just thirty years old, I was silent and memorizing: the program he proposed to the delegations was the updating and the re-proposal of the direction of the 13 years at Carlino . It was the absolute dam. With the crisis of the first Spadolini government, I had just gotten married - continues Patuelli -, but I immediately returned to Rome to lend a hand in the formation of the second Spadolini government".

The second phase was the nomination as senator for life , “he was delighted – Patuelli always recalls – while another great disappointment came in 1992, when he was not elected to the Quirinale: the veto came from Craxi ”.