On the morning of Monday, August 4, I learned through an Ansa release, that the famous journalist Stefano Bonilli, has left us, he passed away suddenly from a heart attack on the evening of Sunday, August 3. I was stunned, he was little more than my age and I had known him, albeit superficially, for 30 years.
Throughout the day between a business meeting and a meeting, in the stretches of road that separated me between one appointment and another, I would search the Internet for some more news, without finding any. My thoughts ran far back in time, to the mid-1980s, when I was marketing director of La Gola magazine, when with Carlo Petrini we were talking about restoring dignity to the word food, when Gianni Sassi (perhaps someone remembers him) created the Arcigola brand, and Slow Food was just a thought that had not yet taken shape. Gambero Rosso was taking its first steps as a supplement to Il Manifesto. I remember that Stefano when he passed through Milan would visit us in the editorial office, a chat, a coffee, sometimes an aperitif at the then famous Lucky Bar cocktail bar.
Sometimes in agreement, sometimes in total disagreement, but always united by the awareness of the importance of considering good food and good drink an essential part of the culture of human beings. In those years, food and wine culture was not talked about: Gianni Brera, Luigi Veronelli, Gianni Mura were among the few names who made an effort to give visibility to this sector, no one aspired to be a cook, famous chefs could be counted on the tip of one hand, and the cookbook department in bookstores was confined to a small shelf, often almost hidden.
On Monday evening, returning home, I started "poking around" here and there looking for news about his death and especially his life, but no one was talking about it. Perhaps a few news outlets missed it, but the only journalist I heard give space to this news was Enrico Mentana inside the evening news of la7.
I thought that since it was a sudden death perhaps his biography, his "crocodile" as journalists call it, was not yet ready and that surely in the following days the right memory and recognition would be paid to this man for the high value that his professional commitment had in the Italian wine and food sector, but this did not happen.
This silent death, quickly dismissed without even a dense word of mouth, disturbs me because once again it makes me suspect that in order to be praised alive and dead one must be aligned and supine to the conformity of common thought. Bonilli was an often uncomfortable voice, "out of the chorus" as they say, but her views, though not always agreeable, were never wishy-washy; they were always the result of deep and coherent thought. He was a figure of lights and shadows and for this reason, in my opinion, prominent and multifaceted, but above all he was a great innovator, a courageous journalist, a leading figure in the redevelopment of the entire Italian food and wine and agribusiness sector. The whole sector, especially the productive sector of excellence that no one was concerned about, found in him a voice, a window of visibility and expertise, we all owe him a lot, but we are a nation with a very short memory, shorter and shorter, by now we don't even remember who left us just a week ago.
Monica Palla
