Carla Voltolina

Carla Voltolina (14 June 1921 – 6 December 2005), also known as Carla Pertini since marriage, was an Italian journalist, partisan and psychotherapist. She undertook investigations into prostitution in Italy and provided therapy at hospitals and addiction-treatment clinics across Italy.

As the spouse of Sandro Pertini, she was the Companion of the President of the Italian Republic from 1978 to 1985.

Biography

Born in Turin, Carla Voltolina was the daughter of Luigi, an official of the Italian army from Chioggia, and Rosa Barberis, from Piovà Massaia. She had two sisters, Laura and Luisa, and one brother, Umberto (born 1940). When Voltolina was six, her father signed her up for swimming and she won several trophies by competing with the youth division of Juventus. In 1938, Carla dropped out of school. She later completed evening courses and took additional examinations to enter Bocconi University.

After September 8, 1943, Voltolina joined the Italian resistance movement as a courier (known as staffette) for the Matteotti groups, first in Turin and then in Marche. Arrested by the SS during an operation, she escaped thanks to the help of a doctor. In German-occupied Rome, she collaborated with the secret, socialist press of Eugenio Colorni. After the liberation of Rome, she remained committed to the Italian Resistance and transferred to the still-occupied north of Italy. During that time, she met Sandro Pertini, who had come to the region as a representative of the National Liberation Committee (Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale). Pertini was already well known for his imprisonment and exile from Fascist Italy. They met in Milan, on the way to Modena, in the house of the lawyer Arialdo Banfi. They lived together for two years, and on June 8, 1946, they received a civil marriage in the new Italian Republic.

They went to live in Rome in an apartment given to them by Leonida Repaci. Afterwards, they moved to an apartment in the EUR neighborhood in a group of houses build for deputies. When Pertini became president of the Camera, they moved to Montecitorio, and they eventually moved to an attic apartment only from the Trevi Fountain in via della Stamperia.

She was subscribed to the military district of Rome as a "decorated combatant with the Croce di guerra" for her assignment in the Resistance. On September 23, 2002, she founded the Florentine Fondazione Sandro Pertini. From the day of her husband's death in 1990, she decided to be called Carla Pertini, which she had previously always refused, preferring to use the name she was born with.

In 2003, she donated her husband's 1962 Fiat 500 to the Museo dell'automobile di Torino.

Voltolina categorically denied the accusations. The vice president of the Fondazione Pertini, Piero Pierri, said that Voltolina was never opposed to the friendship between her husband and the Pope. Pierri blamed the confusion on an episode of March 23, 1987, after the funeral of general Licio Giorgieri. Pertini fell ill and was recovering in the Roman clinic but was not able to receive a Papal visit due to a medical prohibition.

Biographical film on Pertini In 1993, for personal reasons, Voltolina blocked the broadcast of the TV film Se ci sarà un giorno produced by and directed by Franco Rossi for RaiDue. The film was made to celebrate Pertini, who had died three years before. The role of Pertini had been entrusted to Maurizio Crozza, while Carla Signoris played Matilde Ferrari, the young fiancé who remained at home while Pertini fled to France and waited for 18 years before giving him up. The film was broadcast only once on Rai 3 on May 31, 2003, to viewers:

"No one wished to displease Mrs. Voltolina. She said that the love story with Matilde was not true, that it disgraced the figure of the President. I tried to convince her. There was no way. She was an unusual person, she even involved the Quirinal [i.e. the Presidency]." the condolence messages received by Voltolina after Pertini's death; a collection of commemorative documentation on the inauguration of the Pertini museum in Savona and the 600 volumes they donated to the Università degli Studi di Siena, as well as the commemorative stamps, notes, and initiatives of students in 1999 to 2000; the private correspondence and a collection of personal documents on the elderly, women, drugs, Sigmund Freud and other materials Voltolina collected in her studies of psychology from 1955 to 1995; and Voltolina's correspondence as president of the Fondazione Pertini.

The archive was then donated to the Fondazione di studi storici Filippo Turati in Florence (part of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism archival system) on February 27, 2015.

Awards