Prince Giovanni Francesco Alliata of Montereale and Villafranca (Rio de Janeiro 1921 - Rome 1994), Gianfranco to friends, began his political career in 1943. Immediately after the first Allied landings, he joined the Sicilian separatist movement, Movimento Indipendista Siciliano (MIS), as a representative of the landowners. The MIS enjoyed the support of the Allies. The Prince, young but wealthy, cosmopolitan and influential, will have come to their attention.
As a member of the P2, he could probably rely on the support of other members then in Malta- Mario Vella
The MIS was also initially supported by the Mafia, before the latter decided that the movement had no future and that it made more sense for it to network with the national political parties, especially the Democrazia Cristiana.
On May 1, 1947, 65 May Days ago, a large number of poor peasants assembled at Portella della Ginestra, close to Piana degli Albanesi, to celebrate May Day, when machine gun fire was suddenly opened on them. Eleven were killed and 27 wounded. Among the dead were four children. Among the wounded was a very young girl whose jaw was shot clean off.
Gaspare Pisciotta, right hand man of Salvatore Giuliano, the separatist bandit who led the massacre, told enquiring magistrates that Prince Alliata was one of a number of the bloodbath’s instigators. Predictably, on the eve of his trial, Pisciotta was poisoned in prison. Giuliano himself was never brought to trial. The official narrative is that he was killed in a shootout with the Carabinieri. Another version is that it was Pisciotta, in agreement with the Carabinieri, to take out Giuliano.
From 1947 to 1963, the Prince sat in the Italian lower house of representatives for a succession of right wing parties, respectively the Partito Nazionale Monarchico, the Partito Monarchico Popolare and finally the Partito Democratico Italiano di Unità Monarchica (PDIUM). In 1972, the latter opted to dissolve itself and the majority of its members joined the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano - Destra Nazionale (MSI-DN).
Big spending and hard playing, Gianfranco was well connected. Networking was his forte, although in 1970 the magistrates of Rome’s Procura della Repubblica would probably have preferred the term “conspiracy”. Prince Gianfranco was warned of an imminent arrest and fled Italy just in time. He was accused of having liaised with Cosa Nostra on behalf of another prince, Junio Valerio Borghese, central character in the failed attempted coup d’état of December 7/8, 1970.
The background to the events of December 1970 – the political situation in Italy and the whole Mediterranean region, the involvement of Italian and other Nato intelligence services, the dense network of links between secret services and neo-fascist movements, the role of the secret “masonic” lodge Propaganda Due (P2) – continues to generate many disturbing questions, some of which are relevant to Malta’s own post-WWII history. But let’s get back to the Prince.
Before the Roman magistrates could arrest him concerning his role as a go between with the Mafia – Borghese needed Cosa Nostra’s support – Gianfranco fled abroad, destination Malta. As a member (number 361) of the P2, he could probably rely on the support of other members then in Malta. For authoritative background on the P2 in the period 1965-1974, see Section 4 of Tina Anselmi’s majority report of the findings of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, http://archivio900.globalist.it/it/documenti/doc.aspx?id=439 .
Another P2 member in Malta at that time was Admiral Gino Birindelli (membership number 130), then commander of Nato’s Allied Naval Forces Southern Europe (NAVSOUTH). Between 1972 and 1976, Birindelli (1911-2008) – who, like Borghese, served in the Italian Navy’s Decima MAS during the war – was elected to parliament for the neo-fascist MSI-DN whose president he was for a while before moving to a short-lived splinter party. Birindelli, who was declared persona non grata by Dom Mintoff in 1971 for having involved himself in local politics, much later told La Stampa that he never thought very highly of the P2. He indicated that he only joined after becoming a civilian. If this were the case then he joined after Prince Alliata’s flight from Italy. Anyway, Birindelli’s name crops up again in relation to Edgardo Sogno, another shady character with connections to Malta who was investigated for plotting to overthrow the Italian government in the early 1970s.
Be that as it may, in Malta the Prince could rely on other contacts too. Already in 1967 he was able to get himself published in the Journal of the Faculty of Arts of the Royal University of Malta (Vol. 3, Nr. 3, pp.234-236). Under the title Malta e l’unità Mediterranea, we get a long list of cultural events promoted by himself in Europe and central America including the launching of a quaint manifesto to “all artists of the world (demanding) that they overcome the limited and decadent forms that find their condemnation in existentialism”. After praising the merits of his International Academy of the Mediterranean, whose academicians included the authoritarian ruler of Portugal, Salazar, the Prince calls on the “representatives of Maltese culture” to transform Malta into “the crossway of Western Mediterranean culture”.
A flimsy but pompous document no doubt, the significance of which, however, cannot be underestimated. It is clear evidence of the, at best, naïve character of what the Prince addressed as the “representatives of Maltese culture”, at least the ones that made its publication possible. It says more about us then (and now?) than about Gianfranco.
Dr Vella blogs at http://watersbroken.wordpress.com .