Nuorese Cultural DistrictPietro Mastino (b. Nuoro, 24 January 1883–d. Nuoro, 19 March 1969) was an Italian politician.
Pietro Mastino
Description
Son of a famous lawyer, he attended primary and middle school in Nuoro and secondary school in Sassari. He studied law at the Royal University of Turin, graduating in 1905 when he was just twenty-two.
He became famous for his brilliant defence on 22 June 1910 of two men accused of murdering the mayor of Bitti. The case drew the admiration of the magistrates and the public, who were struck by his argumentative rigour and oratory style.
Besides his legal career, Mastino was also intensely involved in politics, taking a fiery and uncompromising stand against fascism. He expressed his views in Il Solco, the official newspaper of the opposition.
After the Great War, during which he served as machine gun lieutenant, he became one of the founders of the Sardinian Action Party. In 1919, he was elected representative of the Veterans’ Association party and in 1921 and 1924 he was reconfirmed among the ranks of the Sardinian Action Party.
In this capacity, he fought for the re-establishment of the Province of Nuoro and the autonomy of Sardinia.
In 1924, after the scandal of the murder of Matteotti, he began a dogged, resolute fight against fascism that lasted the entire twenty years of the regime. However, joining the Sassari Opposition Committee cost him his parliamentary post and he had to return to Sardinia to resume his work as a lawyer.
In 1932, he refused to interrupt a criminal hearing to commemorate the Duke of Genoa, for which he was suspended for six months from the Council of the Order of Lawyers and demoted to the rank of simple soldier by the military authority.
It was only after the fall of the fascist regime that he was able to resume his political activity.
Although in 1946, he was the victim of a violent episode, when a bomb was thrown at the window of his home in via Guerrazzi.
In 1945, he participated in the National Council and was later appointed Treasury Undersecretary during the Parri and De Gasperi governments.
In 1946, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly and later served as Senator by Right from 1948 to 1953.
Besides his work on the national stage, he is also remembered for his time as mayor of Nuoro, from July 1956 to January 1961, during which he devoted himself to solving the city’s most urgent economic and structural problems. Under his leadership, a precise new city plan was drawn up, attention was paid to building schools and public housing and the city’s peripheral roads were improved.