On 18 February 1981, five days before the coup d’état, the newspaper El País published an editorial comparing Adolfo Suárez to General Della Rovere. It was another cliché, or almost: in the Madrid political village at the beginning of the 1980s – in certain circles of the left of this village – comparing Suárez to the Italian who collaborated with the Nazis turned hero of the resistance, the protagonist of an old Roberto Rossellini film, was almost as common as mentioning the name of General Pavía every time there was a mention of the threat of a coup d’état. But, although Suárez had resigned from his post as Prime Minister three weeks before and this fact perhaps might have been an invitation to leave behind the errors and recall the successes of the maker of democracy, the newspaper was not resorting to the comparison to praise the figure of Suárez, but to denigrate him. The editorial was extremely harsh. It was titled ‘Adiós, Suárez, Adiós’ and contained not only implacable reproaches of his passivity as acting Prime Minister, but also especially a global rejection of his management at the head of the government; the only merit they seemed to admit consisted in ‘having conferred the dignity of a democratic prime minister on curbing the remains of Francoism for years, like a convinced General Della Rovere transmuted into his role as defender of democracy’. But the newspaper soon denied Suárez this consolation honour and accused him of having given in to right-wing blackmail with his resignation. ‘General Della Rovere died in front of a firing squad,’ it concluded, ‘and Suárez is running away in a hurry, with no end of bitterness and not a lot of guts.’
Did Suárez know Rossellini’s film? Had he read the editorial in El País? Suárez was very fond of the cinema: as a young man he’d been a regular at double features, and as Prime Minister rarely would a week go by that he wouldn’t watch at least one of the 16-mm films his butler Pepe Higueras obtained from Televisión Española and projected in a room in Moncloa (sometimes he watched these films with his family or with the family’s guests; he often watched them alone, in the early hours: Suárez slept little and ate badly, a diet based on black coffee, cigarettes and omelettes); his taste in movies was not sophisticated – he mostly enjoyed adventure films and American comedies – but it’s not impossible that he might have seen Rossellini’s film in 1960 when it was released in Spain, or even that he might have seen it years later in Moncloa, curious about the character the great sewer of Madrid was comparing him to. As for the editorial in El País, he probably read it; although in the months of political siege and personal collapse that preceded the coup he didn’t allow the newspapers into the family’s living quarters without being expurgated, to spare his wife and children the daily broadsides against him, Suárez continued to read them, or at least he continued to read El País: from the very day of his appointment until that of his resignation, the newspaper had been a very severe critic of his mandate, but, because it represented the intellectual, modern and democratic left that his unredeemed guilty conscience of a former Falangist envied and for years dreamt of representing, not for a single instant had he not kept it in mind and maybe even secretly sought its approval, and that’s why so many people in his party and outside it accused him of governing with one eye on its pages. I don’t actually know if Suárez read the editorial in El País on 18 February; if he did, he must have felt a profound humiliation, because nothing could humiliate the cocky old Falangist as much as being called a coward, and few things could have pleased him more than demonstrating five days later that the accusation was false. I don’t actually know if Suárez had a capricious urge or the curiosity to watch Rossellini’s film when he was still Prime Minister and so many were identifying him with its protagonist; but if he did, maybe he would have felt the same profound emotion that strikes when we see outside ourselves what we carry inside ourselves, if he’d remembered it after 23 February, maybe he would have thought of reality’s strange propensity to allow itself to be colonized by clichés, to demonstrate that, despite their being fossilized truths, that doesn’t mean they’re not the truth, or that they don’t foreshadow it.
General Della Rovere tells a fable set in the tattered ruins of an Italian city occupied by the Nazis. The protagonist is Emmanuele Bardone, a handsome, affable, skirt-chasing, lying, swindling, gambling nonentity, an unscrupulous rogue who extorts money from the families of anti-fascist prisoners with the lie that he’s using it to alleviate the captivity of their relatives. Bardone is also a chameleon: to the Germans he is an enthusiastic supporter of the Reich; to the Italians, an undercover adversary of the Reich; he employs all his seductive gifts on both sides, manages to convince both that there’s no one more important than them and that he is ready to do anything for their cause. Bardone’s destiny begins to change when, at a routine roadblock, the Germans kill General Della Rovere, an aristocratic and heroic Italian soldier recently returned to the country to coordinate the resistance against the invader; for Colonel Müller – the commanding officer of the occupying forces in the city – this is terrible news: had he been taken prisoner, Della Rovere could have been of some use; dead, he has none. Müller then decides to spread the news that Della Rovere has been taken prisoner, and very soon Bardone, whose acting talent the colonel has come to know not long before and whose shady dealings with a corrupt official he soon unmasks, offers him the chance to take advantage of this hoax: Müller proposes to save him from the firing squad and offers him freedom and money if he agrees to pass for General Della Rovere in jail, trusting he’ll be able to use his presence there in the future.
Bardone accepts the deal and is taken to a prison crowded with anti-fascist prisoners. From the first moment the unscrupulous rogue plays the part of the left-wing aristocrat with aplomb, and everything he sees or feels in prison seems to help his interpretation, shaking his conscience: the very day he arrives he reads the posthumous messages of executed partisans on the walls of his cell; the prisoners place themselves under his orders and treat him with the respect the man who for them personifies the promise of a liberated Italy deserves, ask him about relatives and friends who fought in units under his command, joke about the unhappy fate awaiting them, beg him wordlessly to instil them with courage; one of the prisoners who frequents Bardone commits suicide rather than turn informer; later, to establish Della Rovere in his role, the Germans torture Bardone himself, which almost sets off a riot among his fellow prisoners; later still Bardone receives a letter from the Contessa Della Rovere in which the general’s wife tries to comfort her husband by assuring him that she and his children are well and think only of being worthy of his courage and patriotism. This continuous series of impressions begins to cause a subtle, almost invisible metamorphosis in Bardone, and one night something unexpected happens: during an allied bombing raid that provokes cries of panic in the prison Bardone demands to leave his cell; he is trembling with fear, but, as if the general’s character had momentarily taken over his person, standing in the corridor of the political prisoners’ wing and, invested with the grandeur of Della Rovere, Bardone calms his comrades’ fear by raising his voice in the midst of the thunder of battle: ‘Friends, this is General Della Rovere,’ he says. ‘Show some dignity and self-control. Be men. Show these scoundrels you’re not afraid of dying. They’re the ones who should tremble. Every bomb that falls brings them closer to the end, and brings us closer to freedom.’
Shortly after this episode fate offers Colonel Müller the opportunity he’s been waiting for. A group of nine partisans captured in a raid are sent to the prison; one of them is Fabrizio, the leader of the resistance, but the Germans do not know which one: Müller asks Bardone first to identify him and then betray him. For a moment Bardone hesitates, as if Bardone and Della Rovere are fighting it out within him; but Müller reminds him of the promised money and liberty and adds the bribe of a safe conduct with which to escape to Switzerland, and finally breaks Bardone. He hasn’t yet managed to identify Fabrizio when a high-ranking fascist authority dies at the hands of the resistance; in reprisal, Müller must shoot ten partisans, and the colonel understands that this is the moment to facilitate Bardone’s task. The night before the execution Müller locks twenty men in a cell, ten of whom will be the expiatory victims; sure that at death’s door Fabrizio will make himself known to Della Rovere, Müller includes Bardone and the nine prisoners caught in the raid. Müller is not mistaken: over the long night awaiting execution, while the prisoners look for strength or consolation in the valiant company of the false General Della Rovere, Fabrizio reveals himself. Finally, at dawn, when the men come out of the cell, Bardone is one of them, but Fabrizio is not. They walk out to the firing squad formed on the patio of the prison, Müller stops Bardone, separates him from the line of the condemned, asks him if he’s managed to find out who Fabrizio is. Bardone stares at Müller, but says nothing; he needs only to say one word in order to be set free, with enough money to carry on his interrupted life of gambling and women, but he says nothing. Perplexed, Müller insists: he’s sure that Bardone knows who Fabrizio is, sure that on a night like that Fabrizio would have told him who he is. Bardone does not take his eyes off Müller. ‘And, what do you know?’ he finally says. ‘Have you ever spent a night like this?’ ‘Answer me!’ shouts Müller furiously. ‘Do you know who he is?’ In response, Bardone asks Müller for a pencil and paper, scribbles a few lines, hands them to him and, before the colonel can see whether they contain the real name of Fabrizio, he asks him to see that they get to Contessa Della Rovere. While Bardone orders a jailer to open the gates to the patio, Müller reads the paper: ‘My last thoughts are with you all,’ it says. ‘Viva Italia!’ The patio is covered with snow; tied to posts, ten blindfolded men wait for death. Bardone – who is no longer Bardone but Della Rovere, as if somehow Della Rovere had always been within him – takes his place beside his comrades and, just before falling under the bullets of the firing squad, speaks to them. ‘Gentlemen,’ he says. ‘In these final moments let us dedicate our thoughts to our families, our nation and His Majesty the King.’ And he adds: ‘Viva Italia!’