The twinning that renews the values in which the commander "Geppe" believed, the Cagliari partisan Nino Garau, who in the days of the fight against Nazi-fascism, at the head of the "Aldo Casalgrandi Brigade", offered his contribution to free Spilamberto , in the province of Modena. The pact between the two municipalities, to which he linked his destiny, had a further seal in the meeting that took place yesterday at Palazzo Bacaredda and which united, in memory, Nino, who died in July 2020 at the age of 96 years old, and his wife Luciana Magistro disappeared in recent days. The mayor of the Emilia municipality Umberto Costantini and the president of the civic assembly of Cagliari Edoardo Tocco took part. With them Dino Garau, the partisan's son, his niece Francesca Nurra, the councilors Andrea Dettori and Antonello Angioni, who gave impetus to the initiative, the group of researchers from "Issasco", led by Walter Falgio, who brought to light the extraordinary figure of Commander Geppe.
Keepers of memory
And, on the eve of April 25, there were, accompanied by teachers, students from the Spilamberto schools and from the "Dettori" classical high school and from the "Vittorio Emanuele II" national boarding school in Cagliari. Girls and boys who have to pass on the story and memory of Nino Garau. "Thanks to men like him today we have our freedom and a system of rights and duties that are the basis of civil coexistence," said the students who arrived from Spilamberto. "He gave up a quiet life in Sardinia to go and fight against totalitarianism in one of the symbolic places of the Resistance," added their Sardinian peers.
The turning point
Garau's life changed radically after 8 September 1943. As Issasco's researcher Walter Falgio recalls in the volume "Sardinia and the war of Liberation," he is in Forlì, where in August from Caserta the officer cadets had been transferred following the advance of the allied forces". Commander “Geppe” notes in his diary: «On September 8, when we woke up we no longer found any officers. Our superiors had disappeared without giving us any directives: only Badoglio's proclamation could be heard on the radio». He begins to have contacts with anti-fascist circles in Emilia and then, through a relative from Modena, he joins the ranks of the Resistance. What happens next explains the eternal gratitude towards him from the municipality of Spilamberto. "It was April 23, 1945: only then were we able to affirm - writes Garau - that Spilamberto and the entire fifth zone had been liberated before the arrival of the Allies". Umberto Costantini has another project that he would soon like to realize: «Bring all the young people together in the places where "Geppe" organized the partisan struggle to reflect together on what can be done today to resist the fascisms that manifest themselves with other names and new forms ».