lit a candle 3h agoNever met him, only know the name from reading about Berlusconi's cabinets, but friends quoted him saying "I will never give you the satisfaction of saying you were right." That's a whole personality in one sentence.
Their story
Alfredo Mantica was an Italian politician, business adviser and long serving senator who helped shape the foreign policy brief of Silvio Berlusconi's centre right governments. Born in Rimini on 17 July 1943, he died on 17 September 2026 at Gardone Riviera on Lake Garda, aged 83, after a period of…
Alfredo Mantica was an Italian politician, business adviser and long serving senator who helped shape the foreign policy brief of Silvio Berlusconi's centre right governments. Born in Rimini on 17 July 1943, he died on 17 September 2026 at Gardone Riviera on Lake Garda, aged 83, after a period of illness in retirement.
Mantica earned a degree in economics from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan in 1967 and worked as a company executive and business adviser. He joined the Italian Social Movement as a teenager in the late 1950s and rose through local politics in greater Milan, serving as a city councillor in Cinisello Balsamo and then for many years on Milan City Council. Colleagues later remembered him as a cultivated, ironic speaker from the Pino Romualdi current of the old MSI, more interested in institutions and foreign affairs than in street theatre.
He entered the Senate in 1987 for the MSI National Right and returned repeatedly for National Alliance and then the People of Freedom, representing Lombardy seats tied to Monza and Milan across the 13th through 16th legislatures. In Parliament he sat on budget, finance, industry and foreign affairs committees, chaired a joint consultative panel on tax registry oversight, and served on the inquiry into terrorism in Italy. Twice he was appointed undersecretary for foreign affairs in Berlusconi governments: first in the second Berlusconi cabinet with a Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa and cooperation brief, and again from May 2008 in the fourth Berlusconi cabinet, covering bilateral relations with Europe and the former Soviet states of Asia and the Caucasus, EU institutions, Italian culture and communities abroad, and the consular network.
Away from Rome he remained a familiar figure in Monza and Brianza politics. Local editor Marco Pirola, who knew him for more than forty years, wrote that Mantica had spent his final season at his villa near Salo, still trying to host conversations about foreign policy and remembered friends such as ambassador Luca Attanasio. Senate president Ignazio La Russa, a longtime ally from their Milan youth, said he had lost a great friend with whom he had shared a long human and political journey.
Mantica was married and the father of two children. Tributes on the day of his death came from Fratelli d'Italia colleagues, former parliamentary peers including Pier Ferdinando Casini, and the Milanese right that still counted him as a reference point for serious debate on international affairs. He leaves a record of patient institutional work rather than headline confrontation, and a reputation among friends for loyalty, argumentative humour and curiosity that lasted into his last months by the lake.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); Il Cittadino di Monza e Brianza; Secolo d'Italia.
In their own words
“Perdo un amico con cui ho condiviso un lungo percorso umano e politico.”
Ignazio La Russa on Mantica's death, September 2026
“Alfredo e' stato un uomo delle istituzioni, protagonista di una lunga stagione della vita politica italiana.”
La Russa tribute paraphrased in Secolo d'Italia coverage
“Non ti daro' mai la soddisfazione di dire che avevi ragione.”
Recalled by Marco Pirola in Il Cittadino remembrance
Photos
1Alfredo Mantica in 2008
Jan 2008 · by People Forever
He was sharp on those dossiers, I remember the EU and post Soviet Asia work too later on.