Tv, Simona Dalla Chiesa: “Fiction about my father a profound emotion”

Of Ezio De Domenico*

“Deep emotion”, together with “a sense of nostalgia for the good old family times” and “pride for what the figure of Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa represented for the history of the country, on the front line to save democracy from the threat of terrorism”. These are some of the sensations it aroused in Simona Dalla Chiesa, the youngest daughter of the man who first fought and defeated terrorism and then, appointed prefect and sent to Palermo to fight the mafia, was killed by Cosa Nostra, which evidently feared him and saw it as a danger to his power, in 1982, together with his second wife, Emanuela Setti Carraro, the first episode of the miniseries “Our General”, which aired last night on Rai1.

Dalla Chiesa’s daughter has lived for over 40 years in Catanzaro, the city where she moved with her husband, the psychiatrist Carlo
Curti, after the threats suffered by his family right at the time of the terrorist wave that crossed the country in the
70’s. In Calabria Simona Dalla Chiesa worked as a journalist and carried out an intense political activity first as a regional councilor of the PCI and then as a deputy, elected for two legislatures with the PDS list. You are currently a member of the National Assembly of the Democratic Party.

“The emotion that the vision of ‘Our general’ aroused in me – Simona Dalla Chiesa tells ANSA – was twofold. One of a private nature, because from a family point of view it was like being projected into my past, into my dreams of the time, into the times of university and love and, above all, in the years lived together with my father and mother. And then, from a public point of view, it was significant to relive those terrible years, the fears, the risks and the generational clashes that characterized that era and that saw my father and his men on the front line against terrorism, risking their lives to save democracy. I was happy that the series has turned attention to the years of terrorism in a strong way. Years that have been consigned to the past without having elaborated their meaning and without having studied their intellectual contiguities in depth. It was a period that endangered the very stability of our democratic system”. Simona Dalla Chiesa underlines the importance of the series dedicated to the father also “because of the message it sends to young people.

It’s good that the generations who didn’t live through those years – he says – can get to know a piece of history that unfortunately they don’t find in school textbooks. A period that can help them understand that democracy is not a gift that comes from us
Resistance, but it must be defended and nurtured day after day, with mutual respect and protection of the weakest”.

“I also found the interpretation of the actors who were involved in the series very profound and credible – says General Dalla Chiesa’s daughter. Meeting them personally, on the occasion of the preview with President Mattarella, I was able to see their emotional involvement and the passion with which they studied and interpreted this story. The fact that the series was the most watched program of the television evening rewarded the commitment that Rai made to the production of the program and also paid a further honor to my father’s memory”.

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