May 9 is the “Day of Europe”, a day on which we celebrate the victory of the Second World War. Such an important date is also a day dedicated to the victims of terrorism. Peppino Impastato and Aldo Moro are two heroes not to be forgotten.

Today is the 48th anniversary of the killing of Aldo Moro and Peppino Impastato. For years, they have been the symbols of two Italys trying to fight against different evils: the mafia and terrorism. Today is the Day of Remembrance dedicated to the victims of terrorism and the massacres of this matrix. It is an anniversary established by the Italian Republic on May 4, 2007. Each year, in consideration of the fact that on this date, Aldo Moro, an Italian politician and statesman, was killed by the Red Brigades. Also, on the same day in Cinisi, Sicily, the journalist and radio speaker Peppino Impastato was murdered at the forefront of his complaints against the Cosa Nostra.

Moro was killed 55 days after the kidnapping.

On May 9, 19788, Moro’s body was found lying in the trunk of the red Renault 4 used by the Red Brigades for the president’s last trip. The car was parked via Caetani, halfway between Piazza del Gesù, where the Democracy headquarters was located, and Via delle Botteghe Oscure, where the PCI headquarters was: the two parties of the historic compromise that the BR had decided to fight with the machine gun. He wore the grey-striped suit and was tied on the day of his kidnapping via Fani, where the five men of his escort died riddled by the shots of the Skorpion machine guns. Moro did not want to succumb, nor did he want his political vision of unblocking Italian democracy by favouring a social-democratic evolution of the PCI to succumb.

Aldo Moro was born in Maglie, in the province of Lecce, on September 23, 1916. He enrolled in Law at the University of Bari and, after graduating, began his academic career. In 19,46, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly as a representative of the DC, of which he is one of the founders. In 1955, he was Minister of Grace and Justice with the first Segni government. Two years later, he became Minister of Education in the Zoli government. We owe him the introduction of civic education as a subject of study in elementary and middle schools. In 1963, he was president of the council of a government that included socialists. A political experience that ended in 1968. In 1974, he constituted his fourth government, but a critical novelty changed the Italian political framework the following year. In the 1975 administrative election, the PCI achieved a remarkable consensus. It brought the strategy Moro had been supporting back to the centre of the political debate: involving the PCI in the government structure to give the country a new reformist push. From July 1976 to March 1978, Italy experienced a season of national solidarity. The government’s Christian Democratic leadership is supported from the outside by all the parties of the constitutional arc that abstain. They vote against the MSI, the radicals and proletarian democracy.