With a strong defense of the European Union and its values, the Italian ambassador to Spain, Giuseppe Buccino, commemorated on Tuesday the 80th anniversary of the referendum in which Italians decided in 1946 that the country would become a republic after 85 years of monarchy.
This year’s National Day on June 2 featured a large representation from the Spanish Public Administrations, led by the President of the Senate, Pedro Rollán; the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska; and the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security, and Migration, Elma Saiz, among other high-ranking officials.
In front of the numerous guests who attended the event, the ambassador recalled that in those years, after the end of World War II, there were three fundamental moments: the constituent assembly that managed to establish dialogue and mutual respect in the country; Italy’s entry as a founding member of NATO in 1949; and the signing of the Treaties of Rome in 1957, which marked the birth of the European Communities.
Since then, Buccino said, “an extraordinary journey has opened up, not only in terms of economic growth but also in terms of political, cultural, and social growth,” which shaped the “soft” power that has been spreading the “European conception of human dignity as an intrinsic value.”
However, he warned that “today, society fears for the future of its children; it is afraid of the impact of new technologies on work and social cohesion.” Therefore, he urged reflection on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical ‘Magnifica Humanitas’, which warns about the social “gap” that these new technologies can open. “They can be a great help for human development, but they run the risk of acting as an accelerator of the technocratic paradigm and therefore need a new spiritual, ethical, and political framework,” said the Italian ambassador.
“At the same time, in the international arena, we are witnessing a constant devaluation of the principles of the United Nations Charter,” he warned against what is shaping up to be a dangerous trend in which there are increasingly systematic violations of human rights and more reliance on aggression” to resolve conflicts.
In this context, Buccino asserted that “Spain and Italy, deeply pro-European states, do not resign themselves to decline because Europe still has a very intense attraction force.” He used as an example the upcoming referendum in Iceland on its accession to the EU, “which would lead us to have a new member state.”
Moreover, the ambassador said, “Europe has demonstrated unity and determination in supporting the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people against Russian aggression.” He emphasized that “Ukraine is Europe” before stating that “Ukraine’s place must be within the European Union as a member state. The Union will be its port after so much suffering, so much courage.”
The Italian diplomat concluded his speech by asserting that “Europe is a point of connection between the West and the East, between north and south, and therefore our vocation as Europeans in a world immersed in the crisis of the bipolar order is to be a force of meeting and dialogue.”
