Four times prime minister, founder of Forza Italia and of a television empire that had shaped the national imagination for over twenty years Silvio Berlusconi left us on 12 June.

He was the wealthiest man in the country, but he was not born rich, he had built up his enormous wealth, first as a property developer, then as a visionary of the television world, with an enrome impetus that prompted more than one prosecutor to look into it.

Born in 1936, son of the boom, conservative, fundamentally right-wing, with an explosive personality, he bewitched with his instinctive sympathy. He told jokes. He spoke like the man in the street. He showed closeness to the common people. He wanted to speak to the housewife who watched his programmes while cleaning her house.

It was thanks to Fininvest television, with the foundation of Canale 5 in 1980, to which Italia Uno and Rete 4 were added, that he made his mark.
He cultivated very solid relations with Bettino Craxi’s socialists, then permanently in government in an essentially anti-communist design. The Christian Democrats looked at him with distrust, as did those on the left.

He founded his own party, which he unbelievably called Forza Italia, and stood in the elections. He wins. It is the founding act of the Second Republic. The old parties that held the First, the DC, the PSI, the PCI, are buried under a heap of rubble.
Not even the scandals, the trials, the incredible number of ad personam laws and conflicts of interest have dented its image. He remained at the centre of the palace for thirty years.
He was a novel character and it is strange to think that he is no longer here. For better or worse, he represented the mirror of this strange country that is Italy.