Gorica/Gorizia and Nova Gorica are an example of how conflicts between nationalities can be resolved: Italians and Slovenians have always lived in the city, which was divided by the border between Italy and Slovenia after the Second World War. The ethnic conflicts that flared up in the Adriatic coastal region in the 19th century and culminated in mass murder and expulsion in the 20th century were transformed into cooperation after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The crowning glory is the joint application of Gorica/Gorizia and Nova Gorica to be the European Capital of Culture: the series of events will open on 8 February 2025. However, a dark shadow now hangs over it: that of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), who once tried to turn Italy into an ethnically homogeneous state by assimilating or expelling national minorities. Mussolini has been an honorary citizen of Gorica/Gorizia since 1924 – and will remain so, as the city council decided on 11 November.

Mayor Rodolfo Ziberna spoke out against the revocation, arguing that the motion was a pretext and an ‘attempt by the left’ to ‘undermine the great cohesion and cooperation between Nova Gorica and Gorica/Gorizia in view of next year’s European Capital of Culture’. Ziberna describes himself as an anti-fascist; he began his political career with the social democratic party PSDI and switched to the centre-right after its demise. Ziberna was quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA as saying: ‘History, especially its darkest and most condemnable pages, is not to be erased; on the contrary, it must be made known, especially to the younger generations, so that it is never repeated.’

The decision provoked strong criticism from the Slovenian minority in Italy, and the Slovenian Foreign Minister condemned it in the strongest terms.

Gorica/Gorizia is not an isolated incident. While most of the 6,700 or so municipalities in Italy that made Mussolini an honorary citizen during the Fascist era have revoked this decision after the fall of the regime (some of them, admittedly, only recently), several hundred have still not done so.

Other Fascist ‘heroes’ are still honorary citizens of municipalities in Italy, not to mention street names that continue to commemorate the Fascist regime and its ideas without comment. In Balsan/Bozen/Bolzano, for example, there is an entire district around the so-called Victory Monument, the streets of which bear the names of people and places of great importance to Fascism. The Victory Monument was erected in 1928 to celebrate Italy’s victory over the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but above all to demonstrate the superiority of the Fascist regime by invoking the Roman Empire.

Gorica/Gorizia, Trst/Trieste and Istra/Istria were already a powder keg before the First World War. After 1918, the non-Italian population was denationalised. The methods are well known: Croatian and Slovenian schools were closed, cultural and social associations dissolved and newspapers closed. Place and family names were Italianised. On 13 July 1920, the Slovenian cultural centre Narodni dom in Trst/Trieste was burnt down. From 1927, fascist special courts suppressed all resistance. During the Second World War, fascist repression turned into pure terror. In Istra/Istria, after German and Italian troops took control of the area in the autumn of 1943, 5,000 people were killed in October alone. The only extermination camp on Italian soil was set up at the San Sabba Rice Mill in Trst/Trieste.

After Italy switched sides in the summer of 1943 and at the end of the war, thousands of Italians, mainly representatives of the Fascist regime and many collaborators, were cruelly murdered and a large number thrown alive into karst caves (foibe massacres). 250,000 people, both Italians and Croats and Slovenes with Italian citizenship, were then expelled from their homes in Istra/Istria and Dalmatia. None of the perpetrators were ever prosecuted in Italy: Palmiro Togliatti, the (communist) Minister of Justice, issued an amnesty as early as 1946.

Note: This article gives the views of the author and does not represent the position of the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS) or Eurac Research.