Piantedosi’s scales: after Leonka and Spin Time, is it now Casa Pound’s turn?

 Roberto Saviano – whatever one’s opinion of him may be – is a man who is certainly not lacking in intuition. A few days ago, in Rome, when he arrived in front of the building at 55 Via Santa Croce in Gerusalemme – until recently the headquarters of Spin Time, a colourful and multi-ethnic squat in the Esquilino district, and now, following a fire, a temporary urban tent city on the street, the subject of widespread solidarity amongst artists, the Church and parties across the political spectrum – he said: “This isn’t Casa Pound, which is a political occupation; here, on the other hand, it’s a community of families, people who, in order to survive, have allowed this building to carry on.” The writer’s eye picked up on a detail that was by no means insignificant, an invisible link which, however, in the corridors of the Ministry of the Interior and in the mind of Minister Matteo Piantedosi, takes the crystal-clear form of a mathematical proportion: Spin Time is to the left as Casa Pound is to the right. And so, now that – despite the efforts of the Campidoglio and the Vatican – negotiations between the municipality and Spin Time’s owners have broken down, and the occupation seems set to end, with the occupants set to leave their tents to find new, temporary accommodation in Church-owned properties and hotels arranged by the prefecture, many people – even on the right – have begun to ask themselves: is it now Casa Pound’s turn?

By a twist of fate, the squat occupied by the ‘fascists of the third millennium’ is located just a few hundred metres from here, on the other side of the bustling Piazza Vittorio, in a building seized from the State since 2003. “I don’t know, however, whether it is possible to tackle two complicated situations in parallel, especially when they are so close – even physically – to one another,” says Fabrizio Santori, a Rome City Councillor for the Lega. Meanwhile, Marco Perissa, MP and FdI coordinator in Rome, is more forthright: “I don’t know if Piantedosi is taking steps in this direction, but it’s welcome: regardless of whether it’s the right or the left, illegal occupation must be cleared out. Always. That goes for Casa Pound too.” Speaking to Il Foglio, Tobia Zevi, Rome’s councillor for housing, who sits on the left, also agrees: “It would be the right move.”

Certainly, a few months ago – it was October 2025 – whilst a guest at Matteo Renzi’s Leopolda event, the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, remarked cryptically: “When the time comes, even Casa Pound will be cleared out. And that time is drawing nearer. We make no distinctions: it is on the Rome Prefecture’s list of properties to be cleared, so it will be cleared.” This last detail is one with which the minister is all too familiar. For a very simple reason. It was he himself who included the building on Via Napoleone III on the list of properties to be cleared when he was prefect of the capital. Back then, the minister recounted – again during the interview at Renzi’s event – “to defuse any political controversy, I used to carry out, almost always on the same day – if you’ll pardon the expression – a ‘right-wing eviction’ and a ‘left-wing eviction’”. Could this practice now be repeated? There are several indications to suggest so.

Firstly: just like last year, Piantedosi and the Ministry of the Interior chose the summer – when public opinion and media furore die down – for another symbolic eviction: that of the Leoncavallo in Milan. Occupied since 1994, it was cleared on 21 August 2025. One year the Leonka, one year Casa Pound? One day Spin Time, the next Via Napoleone III? Is this the Piantedosi method?

Furthermore, if – as Carmelo Caruso wrote yesterday in these columns – Piantedosi is indeed preparing to take the helm of the National Anti-Corruption Authority (the term of office of the current president, Giovanni Busia, expires on 11 September), leaving the ministry to Matteo Salvini ahead of the election campaign, then for the current Minister of the Interior, the eviction of Casa Pound could be the icing on the cake of a ministerial term that has made the restoration of the rule of law in squatted properties one of its defining features.

Gianluca De Rosa