Steel for Development: Pasquale Saraceno and the fourth Taranto steelworks

[Autom. eng. transl.] The essay traces the birth of the fourth iron and steel center of Taranto from the perspective of Pasquale Saraceno, economist and manager of the Institute for industrial reconstruction. The plant was built in the context of growing European integration, after a long confrontation and heated controversy, both within the public enterprise, and between IRI technicians, politicians and the government. The discussion took place during the transition of the Christian Democracy towards the center-left, while the Catholic ruling class that favored greater state intervention in the economic field gained strength. While the government was equipped with adequate tools to govern the production phenomenon, the steel industry became functional to a more incisive extraordinary intervention in the South. With the ascent of Aldo Moro to the secretariat of the DC, the line supported by Saraceno won: the economic unification of the country, through a planning that conceived the basic sectors and the public enterprise as drivers of development, within poles industrial. The center of Taranto, inaugurated in 1964, thus became the symbol of an entire political season, marked by planning and the dream of expanding the country's democratic foundations.