Giovanni Spadolini

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Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Script error: No such module "infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Check for conflicting parameters". Template:Republicanism sidebar Giovanni Spadolini (Script error: No such module "IPA".; 21 June 1925 – 4 August 1994) was an Italian politician and statesman, who served as the 44th prime minister of Italy. He had been a leading figure in the Republican Party and the first head of a government to not be a member of Christian Democrats since 1945. He was also a newspaper editor, journalist and historian. He is considered a highly respected intellectual for his literary works and his cultural dimension.

Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Florence, he was the author of numerous historical works. He was also a journalist and editor-in-chief of the Bolognese newspaper Il Resto del Carlino, then of the Milanese newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.

Spadolini was the first Italian Minister of Cultural Heritage and Environment from 1974 to 1976. He became Prime Minister in 1981 and he led two successive cabinets which were supported by a coalition of parties in Parliament but this only lasted a few months. He was Minister of Defence in the governments headed by Socialist leader Bettino Craxi from 1983 to 1987 before being elected President of the Senate. In 1991, Spadolini was appointed Lifetime Senator by President Francesco Cossiga.

Early life

Spadolini was born into a bourgeois family: his father Guido Spadolini was a Macchiaioli painter, owner of a large library in which the young Giovanni studied and began to form his culture inspired by secular, liberal-democratic and republican values. He was the younger brother of architect Pierluigi Spadolini. He was an assiduous student, brilliant in all subjects, at Liceo Classico Statale Galileo. He published his first article in 1944 in Italia e Civiltà ("Italy and Civilisation"), a fascist periodical critical of the excesses of fascism in which the idealist philosopher Giovanni Gentile also collaborated.

During the post-war period (from 1945 to 1950) Spadolini became a moderate liberal conservative. He also rejected antisemitism in favour of Zionism.[1] He studied law at the University of Florence and shortly after graduation was appointed Professor of Contemporary History in the Faculty of Political Science. He also became a political columnist for several newspapers, such as Il Borghese, Il Messaggero and Il Mondo, becoming editor-in-chief of the Bologna paper Il Resto del Carlino in 1955, doubling its circulation during his tenure. In 1968, Spadolini moved to Milan where he took over the editorship of Italy's largest newspaper, Corriere della Sera, a position he held until 1972. In that year, he was elected as a senator, going on to serve as minister of the environment and then minister of education. Then in 1979, he was appointed secretary of the small but powerful Italian Republican Party (PRI).

As a journalist, he sometimes used the pseudonym Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (Giovanni of the Black Bands).

Prime Minister of Italy, 1981–1982

File:G-7 Economic Summit Leaders at the Chateau Montebello.jpg
Spadolini (far right) with other national leaders during the G7 summit in 1981

He served as Prime Minister of Italy from 1981 to 1982, the first PM since 1945 not to be a member of the Christian Democrats. He pledged to fight corruption (in particular a scandal involving certain Italian political figures connected with a Masonic lodge known as P2) and mounting terrorist violence.

In foreign policy, he was a non-interventionist but also moderately Americanist. In particular, he shifted away from Italy's previous pro-Arab policy, refusing to meet Yasser Arafat during his official visit to Italy to protest the murder of Stefano Gaj Taché, an Italian Jewish child, by PLO terrorists,[2] and suggesting that the Bologna train station bombing may have been perpetrated by the PLO and Gaddafi's Libya, in spite of a majority accusing neo-fascists.

In 1982, after a political crisis between the Minister of the Treasury Beniamino Andreatta (DC) and the Minister of Finance Rino Formica (PSI), Spadolini resigned and formed a new cabinet identical to the former, which collapsed in November when Bettino Craxi's Socialist Party withdrew its support.

Later life

Under his leadership, the PRI obtained 5% of all votes for the first time in the 1983 Italian general election. From 1987 to April 1994, he was president of the Italian Senate. He became Acting President of Italy on 28 April 1992, upon the resignation of then President Francesco Cossiga, for a month. Following the electoral success of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, he lost the chairmanship of the Senate to Carlo Scognamiglio Pasini by a single vote.

Personal life and death

Spadolini never married.[3] In July 1994 he had a stomach operation.[3] He died of respiratory failure in Rome in August 1994.[3]

Electoral history

Election House Constituency Party Votes Result
1972 Senate of the Republic Milan I bgcolor="Template:Party color" | PRI 7,231 checkY Elected
1976 Senate of the Republic Milan I bgcolor="Template:Party color" | PRI 6,862 checkY Elected
1979 Senate of the Republic Milan IV bgcolor="Template:Party color" | PRI 10,134 checkY Elected
1983 Senate of the Republic Milan I bgcolor="Template:Party color" | PRI 13,405 checkY Elected
1987 Senate of the Republic Milan I bgcolor="Template:Party color" | PRI 7,745 checkY Elected

References

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External links

Media offices
Preceded byTemplate:S-bef/check Director of the Resto del Carlino
1955–1968 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by
Preceded byTemplate:S-bef/check Director of the Nuova Antologia
1955–1994 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by
Preceded byTemplate:S-bef/check Director of the Corriere della Sera
1968–1972 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by
Academic offices
Preceded byTemplate:S-bef/check President of the Bocconi University
1976–1994 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by
Political offices
New office Minister for Cultural Heritage and Environment
1974–1976 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by
Preceded byTemplate:S-bef/check Minister of Public Education
1979 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by
Preceded byTemplate:S-bef/check Prime Minister of Italy
1981–1982 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by
Preceded byTemplate:S-bef/check Minister of Defence
1983–1987 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by
Preceded byTemplate:S-bef/check President of the Italian Senate
1987–1994 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by
Preceded byTemplate:S-bef/check President of Italy
ActingScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
1992 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded byTemplate:S-bef/check Secretary of the Italian Republican Party
1979–1987 Template:S-ttl/check 		Template:S-aft/check Succeeded by

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