A life as a rebel with a cause. Kill Benito Mussolini. Bruno Castaldi tried twice, without succeeding, and he never got over it. Because he could have changed the course of history. From here we can already understand how the life of the anarchist from Sesto Fiorentino offers, to anyone who wants to tell it in a book, ideas bordering on the novelistic. But it also gives a hard time, the events are so intricate and discontinuous, in addition to the heavy absence of specific studies on an adventurous character. The Rimini journalist Onide Donati took the bull by the horns by combining the documents in the file dedicated to Castaldi on the shelves of the State Archives of Florence, with the testimonies of his daughter Aurora, who lives in Miami. A book was born, Me against the leader. A story of love and anarchy (Aiep) which respects the course of history: of the anarchist, and of the eventful times in which he lived, which go from the First World War until the sixties of the economic boom. But he also allows himself narrative glimpses, without taking too many liberties.
«Anarchists are by definition characters with a literary aura, due to the often very risky actions carried out in the name of their ideals – explains Donati – but Castaldi has different characteristics. First of all he is a shoemaker who has learned the trade so well to become a shoe entrepreneur with factories in Spain before the civil war, in Tunis and then in Florence, where he returned with a lot of capital in his pocket enough to make agreements with Ferragamo. At the same time, he is moved by a very strong ideal tension, which he tries to put to good use by throwing himself into it in the most absurd and dangerous situations». But she always makes it through, passing unscathed the world wars and also the Spanish civil war, perhaps also because he is an “anarchist who moves on his own. Many shot in the crowd, he always hit precise targets with reckless actions, and this cost him a 25 year long exile: first in France, then in Spain, a failed attempt towards Mexico, then Tunisia.” In short, an international wanted man “followed everywhere by the police, who invest resources in him, especially in informants: but they never get to him”.
The attacks on Mussolini were both in 1921: «The first, in the spring, was blown up because the police caught him with their guns. outline of the gun clearly visible in the trouser pocket. They don’t know what Castaldi has come up with, so the sentence is light. For the second, in December, he becomes more organised: without weapons because the gun he owned was confiscated, he joins a group of anarchists who, brandishing edged weapons, stop a van on the southern outskirts of Milan to steal guns and muskets to the soldiers on board. Bruno takes a gun for himself, disappears from the group, and lurks at the exit of the Popolo d’Italia, the newspaper for which Mussolini writes. But that day the Duce exits from another door, and that ambush is also a dead end. All that remains is exile.” Failure adds anxiety to a man who is restless by nature, «undoubtedly from a political point of view. The murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, the fuse that ignited the First World War, fascinated the very young Bruno, and it was as if everything started from there – adds Donati – At the beginning he had sympathy for Mussolini, then he finds himself in the trenches on the Piave and he goes from admirer to enemy. His entire political trajectory is zigzagging, and also sees him making compromises to save himself and his family’s skin. Until his return to Florence after the war, when he did not betray his anarchist spirit but at the same time became an acclaimed entrepreneur and capitalist. And, thanks to his friendship with the mayor Mario Fabiani, he gets closer to the historical left, so much so that his coffin is wrapped in the communist flag».
In Donati’s book there is not only the Castaldi of the barricades. But also the man «who relies on his wife Armida, whom he met in her community home where he defends her from the harassment of a group of fascist bullies until the fight. She stops him in excessive impulses and takes him out of the most dangerous situations. And he stays by his side all his life, even if he doesn’t forgive him the death in war of his eldest son Spartacus, which Bruno takes with him when he enlists with the British. Bruno and Armida had already had to endure the pain of the death of another daughter, taken away by poorly treated appendicitis and resulting in fatal septicemia. But the pain for the disappearance of Spartacus is unbearable: his daughter Aurora still remembers him the mother’s heartbreaking screamswhen he received the news. And he still can’t talk about that event today.”