Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
don the one hand Idina, silent but tenacious and always by his side. On the other Alessandra, the little one of the house, witty, prepared, rebellious. Two sisters with an important surname, Ferruzzidaughters of that Serafino who, by selling grain and buying land all over the world, became the most liquid entrepreneur in Italy in the 1970s and then tragically died in a plane crash (December 1979).
Idina is the eldest and is 19 years older than Alessandra (in the middle there are two other brothers, Franca and Arturo) but it’s not just age that divides them. It is Raul Gardini, Idina’s husband and Alessandra’s brother-in-law.
Gardini took over the baton from Serafino Ferruzzi to create in ten years an industrial group of global dimensions, Ferruzzi-Montedison, 90 thousand employees, collapsed in a short time under the blows of Tangentopoli.
“Of wind and earth” by Andrea Pasqualetto and Lucio Trevisan (Solferino).
Idina and Alessandra are the protagonists of one of the most sensational and ruinous family divorces of the last century. It emerges with great evidence from the book Of wind and earthbiography of Raul Gardini published by Solferino, in which the two authors, the reporter of Corriere della Sera Andrea Pasqualetto (a formidable colleague, as can be understood by re-reading his investigations into missing persons) and the mystery writer Lucio Trevisanhave made Gardini’s life a novel truth reporting unpublished testimonies and documentslike the letters that certify the incandescent atmosphere within the walls of the house.
Alessandra was then 36 years old and was dad Serafino’s pet who had promised her a bright future at his side. On the advice of her father, she thus graduated, the only one in the family, in Economics. With Raul and Idina he always had a close relationship.
From an early age they took her on vacation with them, boat, Paris, Argentina. And she has always felt an overflowing affection for Raul. Alessandra didn’t agree with Raul’s risky financial choices. In the book you will find the original letters, which mark the break in the family: Raul and Idina on one side, the other Ferruzzi brothers on the other. Then there will be Mani Pulite. And that shot of July 23, 1993.
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