The protesters, who managed to partially cover the façade and windows in the lower part of the building with spray paint, were intercepted in full action by law enforcement
A group of five environmental activists from the collective Ultima Generazione smeared this Monday with pink paint the facade of the Madame Palace, the seat of the Italian Senate, in a new act of protest by this group to alert against the climate crisis.
“The Italian government is criminal because it finances the fossil fuels“, affirmed the activists, who also warned about a future “without food” and with a “desertified” Italy due to climate change, as seen in several videos circulating on social networks.
#Weather, #environmentalist gave #LastGeneration imbrattano il #senato pic.twitter.com/ZnmyBcgVFO
— AGTW (@AGTW_it) January 2, 2023
The protesters, who managed to partially cover the facade and windows at the bottom of the building with spray paint, They were intercepted in full action by law enforcement, who proceeded to identify and arrest them, according to local media.
“At the base of the gesture is the desperation that derives from the succession of increasingly alarming data on the ecoclimatic collapse, that has already begun, and the indifference of the political world before what promises to be the greatest genocide in the history of humanity,” the group said in a statement.
Reactions of Italian leaders
The reactions of the leaders of the Italian institutions against the attack on the Madama Palace, a historic building built in the 15th century and which houses important works of art, were not long in coming.
“The Senate was chosen cowardly because, unlike other institutionshas never considered the need to create a security area around the building, until now,” lamented the president of the Upper House, Ignazio La Russa.
The Vice President of the Government and Minister of Infrastructure, Matteo Salvini, said of its authors that “they are vandals, not activists” and that “An exemplary punishment is necessary for those who disfigure and damage works of art, paintings, museums and historical monuments, but not before cleaning everything up and repairing the damage caused.”
Questi sono vandali, non attivisti.
Per chi imbratta e danneggia opere d’arte, quadri, musei e monumenti storici serve an exemplary punishment, non prima di aver ripulito tutto e ripagato i danni fatti. pic.twitter.com/xfxpfBn37v— Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) January 2, 2023
For his part, the president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Lorenzo Fontana, “strongly” condemned what happened and recalled that the institutions “represent a fundamental piece of democracy and, as such, must be respected.”
The group of activists responsible for the attack is part of Ultima Generazione, the Italian division of Extinction Rebellion, an international group that promotes civil disobedience and protest actions to draw attention to the climate crisis.
In recent months there have been repeated attacks on works of art and historic buildings in Europe: in October an environmental group threw mash at a Monet painting in Germany, in November two activists attached themselves to two Goya paintings in Madrid and in December several protesters painted the Teatro de la Scala in Milan, among other protests.