Mourning and Legacy: Marta Fascina on Life with Silvio Berlusconi

“They took away my happiness. They ripped out my heart. It was not a year lived, it was mere survival. Such a terrible mourning cannot be overcome, one lives with it,” Marta Fascina, the last companion of Silvio Berlusconi and a deputy of Forza Italia, speaks out almost a year after the death of the former Prime Minister, retracing her life from her childhood in Naples “full of study, sports, and sociability,” with a family “always very present.” But it was in Milan that she found her professional, political, and sentimental fulfillment. Graduated in Literature and Philosophy at the University La Sapienza of Rome, she worked as a journalist and press officer and handled the public relations of Milan, her “favorite team.” The passion for politics, fully embodied by Silvio Berlusconi, was born already in school: “I was in high school, I was 14 years old and his engaging and captivating leadership had bewitched me. His ideals and his modernization programs for Italy, his way of communicating them, excited me. I was fascinated and seduced by the figure of Silvio and by his entrepreneurial and political contribution to our country. I followed him everywhere, in all his manifestations.” And even today, as a deputy of the republic, her commitment is in the path left by the Cav: “Politics has been and is for me the realization of Silvio’s liberal verb.” Marta Fascina was the last companion of Silvio Berlusconi, who wanted to marry her with a symbolic rite, and she was by his side in the last years. His death is a pain still alive and present: “They took away my happiness. They ripped out my heart. It was not a year lived, it was mere survival. Such a terrible mourning cannot be overcome, one lives with it. Moreover, yesterday marked a year since we returned home after the very long hospitalization and we were happy thinking we had left the worst behind.” Being his companion was not always easy: “Prejudice was an element that always accompanied my story with Silvio and in some ways still does not leave me. But he taught me to have a certain flexibility regarding gratuitous nastiness. Love and the smile are the strongest weapon against hate and envy.”