In the farmhouse of Cassano Magnago there was “grandmother Celesta’s sparse but adequate library”, and there he found a little book by Massimo D’Azeglio, “Lega Lombarda – Historical novel of the 12th century”. Many years later, Umberto Bossi could see a premonition in it, but his political conscience, he said, originates from listening to his father Ambrogio. «He was a weaver from Gallarate, he always told me: here there are a lot of people, entrepreneurs, workers, who are not happy, but no one has the courage to say how things really are. So, at the end of the ’70s, when I found myself involved in politics, I said those things”, explained the founder of the Northern League in an interview.
Family and roots in Cassano Magnago
Ida Valentina Mauri, the mother, was the other pillar of a family that had to deal with poverty in the agricultural reality of Cassano Magnago, a «boom experienced in reverse», Bossi often recalled. A small but solid woman, she was described as always far from the limelight but ready, about ten years ago, to face down a television crew who had buzzed her in the middle of the legal storm over the Northern League accounts, to defend her firstborn.
Youth, studies and first jobs
She and Bossi understood each other with a look. Ever since he was a boy, “a boy from Gluck Street”, as he described himself, “a little hooligan” and “a bit reckless”. The first of a series of menial jobs is in the laundry (“I put bleach in the washing machine”), after the scientific high school diploma in the two-year period of evening schools (“An alienating tour de force”), his studies at the University of Pavia, interrupted for economic or political reasons, depending on the reconstructions, before managing to become a gynecologist. In the biography on the government website, in 2004, he is «specialized in electronics applied to medicine».
Family and personal relationships
He returned to the Pavia Polyclinic in 2007, on the occasion of a visit by Benedict XVI. He greets him excitedly and, praising his intervention, says: “Without the family there is nothing left.” Bossi’s side also includes his brother Franco, one of the few admitted into the ailing leader’s circle for a period in 2004, and his sister Angela, with whom he quarreled in the 1980s: according to one version, the reckless Bossi left debts to her and her husband Pierangelo Brivio, and after the breakup the two ran against him in the regional elections in Lombardy. «My sister is the leader of the steaks», the ‘boss dismissed her instead, explaining that he had reacted to her nepotistic tendencies: «She wanted me to take her husband forward».
Political beginnings and first experiences
Politically marked by his grandmother, “a trade unionist of socialist origin”, Bossi remembered having only been involved in activities in support of Allende’s Chile for a few months, selling paintings to raise funds, but denied militancy in the PCI. Yet the magazine «Sette» found its name in the directors of the Verghera di Samarate party section.
Private life and family
In 1975, at almost 35 years old, he married Gigliola Guidali, a clerk in a shop in Gallarate. Riccardo was born, sentenced in 2016 to one year and 8 months, with probation, for embezzlement for alleged personal expenses with Northern League funds, and accused several times of purchases without paying. After the separation, the Senatùr teamed up with Manuela Marrone, an early political partner, who made her apartment available for meetings and signed the founding act of the Lombard League in 1984.
The relationship with Manuela Marrone and her children
He who has always attacked “cardinals” and “bishops”, she is Catholic, with a Lombard mother and Sicilian father, committed to the Bosina school in Varese founded in 1998, and a baby pensioner, as Gianfranco Fini underlined in the distant clashes with Bossi. Marrone and Senatùr have three children, Renzo (1988), the “trout”, who becomes the youngest regional councilor ever elected in Lombardy, and makes headlines for his various attempts to graduate; Roberto Libertà (1990), which ended up in the newspapers for a story of insults and injuries to a Rifondazione Comunista militant; and Eridano Sirio (1995), whose first name is of a mythological character who sleeps at the bottom of the Po.
Marriage and the family vision
The wedding comes after 12 years. In 1994 at the League congress, among memorabilia and merchandising there was also the film of the wedding, celebrated a few weeks earlier by the mayor of Milan Marco Formentini. One day his wife Augusta invites her to La Scala, but Manuela Marrone declines: “I would love to, but I have no one to look after the children for me.” Bossi is against domestic help, «the family system based on domestic help is very wrong. Children have arms and must learn to organize themselves.”