by Gaetano Sateriale
I met Beniamino Del Mercato as a boy, in the late 60s, and since then I have never stopped having a relationship of friendship and respect for his professional skills.
The late 1960s meant student demonstrations, clashes with the police, complaints (not always well-founded), the need to have defense lawyers available to take charge of the new rights that young people and feminists demanded to be recognized for them.
Beniamino was all this: a person who shared those social and political innovations and a lawyer who defended the accused to the letter of the law. But also something more, a person with common sense and able to explain to us “extremists” where and when we were wrong.
They were years full of social unrest: the “redemption of work” against exploitation by companies in the early 60s was underway. And the demonstrations alternated and mixed together: “workers and students united in the struggle,” they said.
The “right to study” was largely achieved, the social elevator began to work much more than it does now, there were important successes in factories and workplaces (on working hours, wages, classification, fairer and more equitable rights for all) and many of us began to collaborate with the unions and left-wing parties.
Beniamino remained an important interlocutor both on a personal level of friendship and trust, and on that of his professionalism.
For us Ferraresi he was a decisive point of reference when the controversial “theorem of judge Calogero” attempted to confuse the extra-parliamentary movements and groups of the 70s (starting with Potere Operaio) with the terrorism that in those years was also spreading on the left. Beniamino helped us to make objective the distances, the differences, the separations, the ruptures that had existed between the activism we had been part of and the clandestine organizations that were spreading: between our workerism and the so-called “worker autonomy”.
Personally, I remember well when Beniamino asked me to testify before the investigating judge of Padua Palombarini, to explain the differences between the people of Ferrara and Emilia compared to other choices that prevailed in Rome, Milan and Padua within Potere Operaio. He asked me, who was already working in Cgil in Ferrara, and I did it with the consent of the Chamber of Labor. I don’t think that with other lawyers of those years I would have accepted such a demanding role.
The last time I needed his legal advice was the terrible story of Federico Aldrovandi. When the city and the institutions split between the official version of the police at the time and what the investigations were slowly bringing to light. A sad moment from an emotional point of view (the violent and inexplicable death of a good boy) and also difficult on an institutional level since no one understood why the City wanted to support the family’s right to ask for the truth. Beniamino and the team of other very good lawyers helped us understand, distinguish, and follow the best paths to arrive at a fair trial.
Barbara and Andrea, his children, had a wonderful idea a few years ago. They organized his eightieth birthday party in Venice, without telling him, with the participation of many friends and colleagues. My wife and I also attended, along with Antonella (Beniamino’s first wife) and it was a wonderful opportunity to renew old ties.
Beniamino and I spent time together in our free time, we exchanged records and books. And every time I wrote something challenging on the institutional, union and political side, I always made him read it before publishing it to get his opinion, also legal.
His homes, both in Ferrara and Agropoli, were for me a place of pleasant meeting and also of vacation. With a friendly atmosphere that mixed an unparalleled view of the Amalfi coast with the delicious dishes of his cook. And also the precepts not to violate. Like the absolute prohibition of putting mozzarella in the refrigerator, which we northerners consider a normal thing but in Cilento and Agropoli is an aberration.
Yesterday Beniamino left us. We will have many beautiful memories of him.
Thank you for reading this article… For 18 years Estense.com has been offering independent information to its readers and has never accepted public funds so as not to burden even a cent on the shoulders of the community. The work we do has a significant economic cost and private advertising is not always sufficient.
For this reason, we ask those who read us every day and, we hope, appreciate us to give us a small contribution based on their possibilities. Even a small support, multiplied by the tens of thousands of Ferrarese who read us every day, can become fundamental.
OR If you prefer not to use PayPal but a normal bank transfer (even periodic) you can make it out to:
Scoop Media Edit
IBAN: IT06D0538713004000000035119 (BPER Bank)
Causal: Donate to Estense.com
