The first time Bossi came to Catania he was chased away by the missini. Pogliese: "I was there, I'll tell you how it went"

A small room on the first floor of the former Central Palace Hotel on Via Etnea. In 1991, Umberto Bossi chooses Catania for his first official appearance in Sicily at the helm of the Lega Nord. It is Thursday, June 13, and three days later, the regional elections will take place. The last before Tangentopoli and the mafia massacres. On the Island, the League of the South makes its debut, led by the then thirty-year-old lawyer Ciccio Midolo. And Bossi is ready to hold a press conference to launch the sister list. But as soon as the leader of the Carroccio begins to speak, slogans erupt from the audience: "Bossi, racist, you are first on the list!", "Neither North nor South... only one Italy", "Bossi out of Sicily".

Around thirty young missini from the Youth Front managed to infiltrate among the journalists and turned that appointment into a riot. The police present could not contain them, they would only stop when Bossi left the room, canceling the press conference. Among them is Salvo Pogliese, then 19 years old, former mayor of Catania, now senator of Brothers of Italy. And Felice Giuffrè, now a lay member of the CSM, at the time provincial secretary of the Youth Front. But not only that. They also found themselves challenging the Senatùr alongside Gianni Alemanno, national secretary of the youth movement of the Italian Social Movement, and the daughter of Altero Matteoli, future Minister of the Environment and Infrastructure. The story, a few years later, would change radically: Bossi, Alemanno, and Matteoli would find themselves together in the Berlusconi government. 

"That year, voting was only in Sicily - Pogliese recounts - and Pino Rauti was vying for confirmation as national secretary of the MSI, which is why the party organized entire buses to bring Youth Front members from all over Italy to the Island, particularly with the national women's leader of the MSI, Adriana Poli Bortone, now mayor of Lecce." Rauti was an ideologue of the Italian and European far right and founder of the subversive movement Ordine Nuovo. His term as national secretary of the MSI lasted only two years - between 1990 and 1991 - replaced by Gianfranco Fini, who a few years later was a key figure in the famous Fiuggi turning point with the creation of National Alliance. 

But on June 13, 1991, the match is still open. And the young missini, who have been traveling back and forth across Sicily for a week to support the electoral campaign of the Social Movement, do not miss the opportunity to contest "the barbarian" Bossi, the standard-bearer of that secession which is smoke in the eyes of those who hold a united homeland as one of their guiding values. "The day before, we discovered about the press conference organized at the hotel - recounts Pogliese, then already the city secretary of the Youth Front - It was our intention to do something striking. We sent some boys unknown to the law enforcement in advance and prepared some banners. 

But outside the former Palace Hotel that day, the police are very present. So the young missini find an original solution: "We decided to enter in pairs, casually - continues the former mayor of Catania - a man and a woman. Among other things, the women came from all over Italy, I entered with a colleague from Trieste. They mistook us for tourists. We managed to be about thirty and waited inside the small room. When Midolo began to speak - smiles the senator - he even praised the presence of so many young people who had come to greet Bossi.” The surprise for the new leghisti manifests when the leader of the Carroccio tries to take the floor. "We stood up displaying the banners and chanting slogans until, after twenty minutes, he gave up and left".

The chronicles of the next day tell of groups of leghisti continuing to confront the young missini: "Fascists," shouted the former. "Racists," responded the latter. "If the League is seen as a racist movement - replied Bossi - it is because the parties, which I believe are the true proponents of separatism, have an interest in launching these accusations at us to keep the underdeveloped South separate, to which clientelistic and welfare logics at most apply, and the North where they still find someone to vote for them".

The case ended up in all the newspapers, local and national. The group was identified by the police and a proceeding was initiated. But the MSI paid the fine - 700,000 lire for each investigated - and the case closed with the penalty. "At that historical moment, we saw the League and Bossi as an opponent, because for us national unity was sacred. Then everything changed - concludes Pogliese - Already in the following years and even more with Matteo Salvini, the League became something else.