Gino Balena

• … and they used to rinse clothes in the Ombrone
• After September 8th 1943
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  • A medal (at last) for Corrado
  • The joke of the military internees
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• Gino Balena
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• When the river Arno was fordable ..
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      • San Michele, the theater takes to the streets
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With that unlikely name Gino Balena (Balena means Whale) could very well be a character in a book. Forty years later in the white quarter (and not only in the white quarter) they still talk about him as a legend. In the end, that now somewhat aged Romagna man from Cesenatico, who at the time was professor of art education in middle school, (the Municipality dedicated an exhibit to him in in December), changed the San Michele and the way of bringing the floats to the square giving rise to the street theatre which is still the festival. Four parades each lasting for half an hour, one for each quarter.   One different from the other and they are different every year. This is repeated for three nights and judged by fifteen judges.

A revolutionary leader
For the young, Gino Balena is just a name. That face materialises by opening an old album, kept in a drawer by those who, in 1970 had just stopped wearing shorts. In a big picture where they are celebrating the first parade won by the quarter of the Tower, the 1970’s, Gino Balena is there, surrounded by his “rionali”: wrapped in a white scarf, with frizzy hair and his face framed by his beard. He’s a leader with his army, a leader who had returned to his Cesenatico and who a few years ago came back to see how the San Michele had changed (if it has changed at all), .”They were the incredible years”  Giuliano Petracchi and Mauro Bellini, at the time young rionali, recounted a few years ago : “La svinatura” (1969), “Gli Etruschi tra realtà e fantasia” (1970), “Le quattro stagioni” (1971), “Vergine, ma vergine davvero”(1972) and ” Carmignano è tuo: difendilo”(1973).In Gino Balena’s five years the Contrada della Torre (Tower Quarter) defeated the Celesti (Blues), the most “educated” quarter. They won three times, defeated only in 1969 and 1971 by the rione giallo (yellow quarter) which hasn’t won since. “Gino got infected by the festival”, Giuliano says “but when we approached him no one had imagined that inspiration and those skills. “The people also became infected. It was not easy, it is said, to convince families and peasants with an morals of another time, to parade, in the year of the Etruscans, with only a piece of cloth between their legs.

Ten quintals of scagliola
Gino taught drawing in middle school which was then in Piazza Niccolini. He had arrived from Romagna and lived at Brucio, near Bacchereto.”I still remember that first meeting” Mauro Bellini recounts, They had asked him what he needed to make floats and he said: scaffolding pipes, some plywood and ten quintals of scagliola”.  That was a revolution: until then they only used wood, cloth and cardboard. “We were wondering what else he would do with so much scagliola”, Mauro continues. You can tell by looking at the picture of the great Etruscan time of the parade of 1970: a giant float, gypsum and scagliola outside to shape statues and columns, a wooden heart and scaffolding pipes inside. A solid armour with which, in five years two-storey houses, castle walls, and city views would be built .”Always represented in a very realistic style, with real shingles and trees”, Giuliano recounts. A style that then, in later years, infected the other quarters.

Floats with electricity and careful finishings
Before Balena they used to parade even with a single float for each quarter then, after Balena with at least four, but the revolution was not only about the floats. Music came to accompany the parades and it was no longer only that of a band or a small orchestra.   Lights increased, they were no longer powered only by the batteries they used to remove from the few cars circulating at the time. The make-up of the faces became more accurate, the costumes were never improvised.   “We weren’t a great “rionale” costume shop”, but the spirit of the San Michele infected many of Gino Balena’s colleagues who began to help him” Giuliano recalls. Themes brought into the square also changed becoming more “social”: it was no longer just anecdotes and stories from the past, but ideas and reflections on current events. In 1973, with “Carmignano è tuo: difendilo” (“Carmignano is yours, defend it”) the Whites told about the great blaze that had burnt the Montalbano a month before and the controversy arisen after help arrived late. The parades were prepared in just a month. The year of olive oil was1972. They also talked about the Rocca which was at the time a private castle that many were hoping could be available to all again. Then the energy crisis came, though. “In all of Italy people had to tighten their belts”, Mauro says   Also, perhaps the repeated victories of the White quarter did not help. ” So in 1975, the Pro Loco, who then organised the feast, had to take note that among the Carmignanesi there was no longer interest in the San Michele. There was a long pause of five years before its return in 1980. (wf)