Caltagirone in provincia di Catania, scalinata di Santa Maria del Monte, costruita inizialmente a sbalzi con lavori diretti da Giuseppe Giacalone, inizio XVII secolo, fu realizzata nell'attuale definizione con 142 gradini su progetto di Salvatore Marino, 1844.
Dagli anni '50 del secolo scorso i gradini sono magnificamente decorati con ceramiche policrome caltagironesi.
"But since to us women too has been granted the right to participate in the rebirth of our homeland, I think it is actually a duty, a great duty of conscience from which nobody can back down and [a duty] that everybody must fulfill according to their own possibilities."
From a campaign rally held in Caltagirone on June 1946 [my translation]
Ottavia was born on April 12th 1907 in Caltagirone as the child of Francesco Penna, Baron of Portosalvo, and Ignazia (Ines) Crescimanno Maggiore, Duchess of Albafiorita. Ottavia was the third of five daughters and her sisters' names were Carolina (who would inherit her mother's title), Girolama Maria Brigida (Mimì), Guglielmina and Gaetana. She came from a family deeply involved in politics. Her paternal grandfather, Guglielmo, was a liberal MP in Modica and her older sister Carolina would be Mayor of Caltagirone from June 1956 to February 1957. They also could count on the friendship of fellow countrymen and politicians Don Luigi Sturzo and Mario Scelba, leaders of the Democrazia Cristiana party.
Like any scion of noble family, she and her sisters were at first educated at home by tutors. She continued her education first in Florence, at Poggio Imperiale Boarding School, and later in Rome, at the College of Trinità dei Monti.
She returned to Caltagirone and in 1933 she married Doctor Filippo Buscemi Galasso. She would give birth to three daughters: Maricò, Ines and Cristina.
Ottavia was devout Catholic who put in practice her religious beliefs. During WW2, at her own personal risk, she secretly distributed butchered meat coming from her estates to poor people or (even worse) she smuggled wheat her fellow noblemen hid to resell to the black market and handed it over to the needy.
After the war, she would be elected as candidate of the Common Man's Front (a right-wing, monarchic and anticommunist shortlived Italian political party) during the General Election of 1946. This candidacy attracted critics from a large part of her fellow townsmen as well as somewhat affecting her relationship with her mother Ines, supporter of Democrazia Cristiana. The rift would later be mended thanks to the common monarchic sentiment.
Ottavia became then one of the 21 women elected as member of the Constituent Assembly and later included in the Commissione dei 75 (her fellow female colleagues were Maria Federici, Leonilde "Nilde" Iotti, Teresa Noce, Angelina "Lina" Merlin and substitute Angela Gotelli), a committee in charge of drafting the Constitution. Although she would soon resign from this position, she is nonetheless considered one of the Madri costituenti (Mothers of the Constitution).
On the occasion of the elections for the Presidency of the Republic, she was the only woman among the candidates. She received 32 votes and came third, after Enrico De Nicola and Cipriano Facchinetti.
Ottavia actively took part in the debates of the Constituent Assembly from march to december 1947, although never personally addressing questions nor intervening. She actually never mingled with the other female parliamentarians and was considered polite but rather aloof. At some point she was even accused by a colleague and fellow Qualinquista Ester Lombardo, of insulting remarks, but these offences weren't never proved so the Assembly decided not to proceed against her.
Ottavia was among those who wished to see the magistracy, as well as the judicial police, the prisons and the detention facilities as organs of the judicial power, as a mean to free them from political influence. This proposal would be later downvoted since the police and the prisons couldn't be considered on a par with magistracy, but were rather its auxiliaries in the administration of justice.
Being a staunch monarchist, in 1953 she was elected as a representative for the Monarchist National Party, and later, in 1958, she would become town councillor, finding herself politically opposed to her sister Carolina, a member of the Demochristian Party. The deaths of her husband and daughter Ines, added to a ever-increasing disappointment about national politics, led her to withdraw from the public life and she chose to find refuge in her family palace in Caltagirone. Despite everything, she never ceased to worry about the underprivileged. In a letter addressed to Minister Alcide De Gasperi, she suggested to establish a plan to rebuild infrastructures, houses and schools destroyed during the war. She was against simply handing out economical aids since "they would end up looking like alms and, to those who are really willing to work, that would be humiliating. [..] So, each province should gather its own funds and assign jobs linked to the public well-being and best suited to their own categories of unemployed people".
She also proposed to create shelters to host habandoned children, who would otherwise live on the streets and become delinquents and with the intent to teach these youngsters a trade, together with Father Quinci, she would found the association "La città del ragazzo" ("The Kid's City").
Ottavia died in her hometown on December 2nd 1986. Her funeral was attended by a large crowd made mostly out of common people.
Sources
Castiglione Alice, Ottavia Penna Buscemi, lotte e contraddizioni tra giustizia sociale e anticonformismo
Montemagno Gabriello, Ottavia Penna
Morelli Maria Teresa, Ottavia Penna Buscemi
Oliveri Maria, Siciliana e monarchica: chi fu la prima donna candidata alla presidenza della Repubblica
Ottavia Penna Buscemi
Pelleriti Enza, PENNA BUSCEMI, Ottavia
Puccio Silvio, «Questa era mia madre». Ottavia Penna, una monarchica al servizio degli ultimi
