By Sofia Bartolini
It was May 27th, 1993, when Florence (Italy) awoke in the middle of the night to an abnormal and, at the same time, terrible roar. The heart of the city suddenly found itself amidst rubble, dust, and bewilderment. In those years in Italy, if a bomb exploded in the middle of a city, the options of its causes were rather limited: either political terrorism (both left and right) or the mafia. In this case, the second option is the right one. The attack killed five people and injured many more. The victims were: Dario Capolicchio (a 22-year-old student), and the Nencioni family, Fabrizio Nencioni and Angela Fiume with their two daughters Nadia (9 years old) and Caterina (less than 2 months old).
The day after the massacre, the only things visible on Via dei Georgofili were the rubble, glass crashed by the shockwave of the car bomb, and the barricades, which tried to demarcate a sort of red zone. At first, nothing was known about what had happened; there had also been speculation about a possible gas leak.
Why Florence?
Indeed, if you think about the history of the mafia, an assassination attempt in Florence apparently does not make much sense. However, it’s necessary to first understand the context of this massacre. The attack can be framed within a series of violent events that occurred between 1993 and 1994; Previously also the ad personam attacks to the judges Falcone and Borsellino had occurred in 1992 and a short time earlier the Georgofili’s massacre, Cosa Nostra had attempted to attack Maurizio Costanzo, a well-known journalist in Via Fauro, in Rome.
A few years earlier in 1986, in fact, the so-called Maxiprocesso (Maxi Trial) had officially begun, in which more than 400 people linked to Cosa Nostra were involved, going so far as to affect even the highest ranks of the mafia organization. After the death of Borsellino, it had also been decided to establish tighter rules for convicted offenders, the also so-called “Falcone pack” that included the so-called "hard prison" (Law 41 bis) which provides for almost complete solitary confinement in maximum security prisons to completely cut off the connections between them and any collaborators on the outside. This method was able to weaken the power of Cosa Nostra at the time.
The main objective of the mafia organization, therefore, was to provoke a feeling of insecurity and terror in the citizens in order to make the state back down regarding the repressive measures that had been imposed on Cosa Nostra. Striking central, historical and artistic parts of cities such as Rome (Via Fauro), Florence (Via dei Georgofili, near the Uffizi Gallery and Palazzo Vecchio), and Milan (1993, near the Gallery of Modern Art), in fact, would not only have caused a feeling of insecurity, but would have had a huge media impact. Later, thanks to the trial and the precious help of the collaborators of justice, it has also emerged that there was initially the idea of attacking the Leaning Tower of Pisa, an important source of tourism for the city of Pisa.
For these reasons, we tend to call these kinds of attacks carried out by Cosa Nostra in the early 1990s as “stragi terroristico-mafiose” ("terrorist-mafia attacks").
Trials and outcomes
The courts in Florence dealt with all the attacks that occurred between 1993-1994 since the Via dei Georgofili massacre can be considered the first major attack of this two-year period. The first trial for the bombing of Via dei Georgofili began in 1996, three years after the bombing, for planners, organizers and perpetrators, and in 1998, only two years later (a very brief amount of time considering the complexity of the case), the first trial was concluded; subsequently, other trials were instituted to find and convict other possible collaborators and the last court cases that took place in the 2000s confirmed that those involved were all from within Cosa Nostra. A total of more than 20 people were convicted for involvement in the attack that took place in Florence, including Gaspare Spatuzza, Cosimo Lo Nigro, Francesco Giuliano and Vincenzo Ferro. Some of them had a very important role in Cosa Nostra and all were confirmed guilty in the “Corte Suprema di Cassazione”.
Thanks to the trials, preceded by the investigations, and also thanks to the collaborators like Gaspare Spatuzza (who was heavily involved in the organization of the massacre) we also came to understand the general logistics of the preparation of the bombing. In fact, it emerged that the logistical base for this massacre was in Prato, where a relative of Vincenzo Ferro (also part of the mafia organization) lived.
It was possible to acquire such detailed explanations of the net of those involved in the 'Attentato di Via dei Georgofili' thanks to the phone records analyzed during the investigations. Phone calls and contacts, in fact, allowed to rebuild the major links between the organizers, the perpetrators and the eventual collaborators.
Every year since the attack at 1:04am on May 27th, the “Martinella”, the bell of Palazzo Vecchio, rings; something that usually happens only in case of serious events.
On January 16th 2023, exactly thirty years after the Via dei Georgofili attack, Matteo Messina Denaro, the most wanted Cosa Nostra boss in Italy, was captured after almost three decades on the run. The operation that led the authorities to capture him was called Tramonto (Sunset), after a poem written by Nadia Nencioni, one of the victims of the attack of Via dei Georgofili in Florence .
Tramonto - (1993) - Nadia Nencioni
“Il pomeriggio
se ne va
Il tramonto si avvicina
un momento stupendo
il sole sta andando via (a letto)
è già sera tutto è finito”
“The afternoon
goes away
The sunset comes closer
a wonderful moment
The sun is going away (to bed)
it’s already evening everything ended”
Sources
Parlamento Italiano, Doc XXIII, n. 37 https://www.parlamento.it/application/xmanager/projects/parlamento/file/Doc_XXIII_n_37_Sez_10.pdf
Naldini, Maurizio. La strage, in "50 anni a Firenze : appunti di storia contemporanea per una biografia di Franco Scaramuzzi - Firenze : Polistampa, 2006- Casalini id: 2252302" - P. [1-14] [14] - DOI: 10.1400/82104 - Permalink: http://digital.casalini.it/10.1400/82104
«Iter Processuale». Associazione tra i Familiari delle Vittime della Strage di Via dei Georgofili, https://www.strageviadeigeorgofili.it/iter-processuale/.
«La Strage». Associazione tra i Familiari delle Vittime della Strage di Via dei Georgofili, https://www.strageviadeigeorgofili.it/la-strage/.
Atti del convegno per il X anniversario della strage di via dei Georgofili Firenze, 26-27 maggio 2003. Le ferite della memoria - Il contesto delle stragi http://www.strageviadeigeorgofili.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Atti-convegno.pdf
Amato, Nicolò. I giorni del dolore, la notte della ragione: stragi di mafia e carcere duro. Armando Editore, 2012.
We thank "Settore Affari istituzionali e delle autonomie locali e cultura della legalità - Regione Toscana"
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