The Nobel Prize for Peace, Lech Walesa receives honorary citizenship of Vicenza and signs copies of his latest book with a Montegrappa

In the afternoon of May 28th, in the Sala degli Stucchi of Palazzo Trissino, crowded with administrators of today and yesterday, the Nobel Prize for Peace, Lech Walesa, in town for the Biblical festival, has received from the Mayor Achille Variati the honorary citizenship of Vicenza, which had been granted on June 14, 1982 and never delivered. "The city council of this city - said Mayor Variati - has never failed in the important moments in the life of mankind to make their opinions and their ideas of freedom heard. In 1982 we decided to confer honorary citizenship to Lech Walesa, a Polish Catholic worker and trade unionist, president of the independent trade union, Solidarnosc, placed under arrest with thousands of his companions after the declaration of a state of siege, to honor, through him - a witness to the universal value of political liberties, civil and religious - workers and all the Polish people that today, as in centuries past, research with great courage and sacrifice a democratic and peaceful road to freedom. "
"I am very grateful for your decision of thirty years ago and for its delivery today," said Walesa, recalling the dramatic situation that Poland lived in the early 80's. "Together - he continued - through many different roads we liberated Europe from communism, we have joined two Germanies, we have changed the world. Our generation has done so much. I was committed to closing the previous era and not to build a new one though. However, what will be built now will tell whether it was worth fighting and winning. This new era requires other structures, other programs, new economic and social fundamentals, not based on the race between superpowers. But there’s a long way to go. You can not change when you think only in terms of electoral and political mandate ... with politicians with no vision, but often on television. "
"I urge you - he concluded - to work together, driven by a collective knowledge and strengthened by a joint force."
The next day, Walesa took part in the Biblical Festival and presented his latest book "On the Wings of Freedom", signing the copies distributed to the crowd of fans with a Montegrappa roller ball in striped black celluloid.