April 25, the lesson of Cesare Pintus: the mayor who brought Cagliari back to life
Arrested in 1930, he remained in prison for six years and contracted tuberculosis due to the harsh prison regime, which caused his death in 1948Per restare aggiornato entra nel nostro canale Whatsapp
The Cagliari lawyer Cesare Pintus, republican, Lussian, Sardinian card, is a "hombre vertical", coherent and rigorous, he embodies the values of April 25 in his militancy and in his generous efforts for the democratic cause. Historian Gianfranco Murtas notes: «Pintus, a republican, follows Emilio Lussu in Justice and Freedom. Entering the Psd'Az he wrote to him: neither I nor Gonario Pinna will ever say a word against the unification of Italy». He was arrested in 1930 and sentenced, with Francesco Fancello, to 10 years' imprisonment by the Special Tribunal. He remains in prison for six years. Due to the very harsh detention regime he contracted a serious form of tuberculosis, which was the cause of his death in 1948 at the age of 47 in the sanatorium of Pra Catinat in Piedmont.
Mayor
After the fall of fascism, Cesare Pintus was secretary of the CLN of Cagliari, editor-in-chief of the Unione Sarda and mayor of his city. This is how Manlio Brigaglia and Giuseppe Podda remember him in the volume with which the centenary of the newspaper born in 1889 was celebrated: «Strenguous defender of democratic freedoms. Under his leadership the capital resumed life. The industrial system starts working again, public services emerge from their long paralysis, work resumes on the construction sites that have arisen to rebuild the houses. It is the Cagliari miracle». The mayor writes: «From the data collected from the census carried out by the Technical Office of the Municipality it appears that out of a total of about 7000 buildings that made up the town of Cagliari, 862 were completely destroyed and 1647 more or less damaged, for a complex of 4,000,000 apartments, I think I'm not far from the truth when I say that as of today, over 2,000 affected apartments have already been restored to efficiency and reused".
Greetings to Lussu
On the columns of the Unione Sarda Pintus greets Emilio Lussu who returns home after the long exile between "fronts and borders": "We will see him again and we will be reconciled in him and in his name we will confidently take the road towards our destiny". After the Second World War, always on the Union, he underlined how important it is to strengthen the reborn democracy with "a healthy propaganda which, by laying bare the wounds of the past, and demonstrating all the resulting damage, traces the path of justice and freedom". His friend Antonino Lussu, recalls Gianfranco Murtas, writes the epitaph: «Cesare Pintus died of illness contracted in prison when an avant-garde sacrificed his life for the freedom of the nation».