Sandro Pertini

It was 1980. Sandro Pertini, President of the Italian Republic, had travelled to Urbino to meet with a group of university students.

At one point, a young man heckled him.

Pertini didn’t flinch. He had known censorship, the real kind, first-hand, and had paid for it with prison and internal exile. He took the floor.

He restated his position. And then he did the most extraordinary thing of all: he defended that young man’s right to challenge him, reminding him that being able to stand up before the President of the Republic, to criticise him, to challenge him, is freedom, a freedom won through the sacrifice and the blood of the partisans.

“I gave fifteen years of my youth to prison for freedom. You are enjoying your youth. You protest, but you are enjoying your youth.And if today you have the right to stand up, to raise your objections, to protest before the President of the Republic, who listens to you with such fraternity, you owe it also to these white-haired men who fought for your freedom and for the freedom of all young people.”