flavia Franzoni, for Romano Prodi was not only a wife, she was also a very trusted – and sometimes very critical – adviser and political partner. A life spent together until the last moment: the wife of the former Prime Minister, in fact, was traveling with her husband and some friends on a Franciscan path in Umbria.
Flavia Franzoni died suddenly while she was with her husband along a Franciscan path. A great pain for the former prime minister (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
They were walking. Franzoni fell suddenlyperhaps due to an illness, and the mountain rescue also intervened to recover the body, under a violent storm. Attempts to revive her were unsuccessfulbecause the woman did not make it.
Flavia Franzoni, farewell to Romano Prodi’s wife
Character determined and reserved at the same time, Franzoni was close to Romano Prodi for over 50 years. A discreet and always present first lady, even when the Professor became Prime Minister.
Reggiana like her husband, she taught Methods and techniques of social services at the University of Bologna and his students there nicknamed “Google” for the inexhaustible memory. Always smiling and outgoing, but never willing to put her ideas aside, even when her husband was Prime Minister, she did not fail to reproach him publicly both on the pension reform and on the scarce presence of women in his executive.
Smiling and outgoing, but never a step back
It was easy to meet her around the streets of central Bologna with shopping bags and when mothers of Plaza de Mayo arrived in Bologna she recipes in her homewhich during the years of the Prodi government had become one of the main centers of Italian politics.
Together, the autobiography written 4 hands
With Romano Prodi they got married on May 31, 1969 and since then, every year, on the occasion of her anniversary, a bouquet of red roses has arrived from her husband. In the couple’s autobiographical book entitled “Together”However, rather than dwelling on the romantic side of the relationship, the teacher puts together all the experiences made with Romano, from academic work to the presidency of IRI, from social commitment to the political and institutional adventure of Rome and Brussels.
But he also talks about his sons, Giorgio and Antonio, “who enthusiastically chose to get married young and have children, even though it took our help to set up a house”. Not missing the opportunity to underline how much the «difficulty or the impossibility of setting up a house is one of the dramas of the new generations» and how much «the political commitment for the family must create economic conditions that allow this choice».
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