On Saturday, 17 October 2026, CGIL and more than a hundred secular and Catholic associations brought “La Via Maestra” into Rome, from Piazza della Repubblica to Piazza del Popolo. The slogan was “Work, peace, environment, welfare, Constitution”. La Repubblica reported from the route. This is not Saturday’s Milan protest, which turned into clashes: here it was an announced union march, with a stage and speeches.

Maurizio Landini, CGIL’s general secretary, closed the rally and called a general strike for 20 November. “We are more than 100,000,” he said from the stage — the organisers’ figure, not a police count. He asked for a 1% solidarity levy on net wealth above two million euros, from which, he calculated, 25 billion would go to health, schools and rents.

The platform wants higher pay and pensions, less precarious work, a “truly fair” tax system, public health at 7.5% of GDP and education at 5%, access to housing, and no rearmament. Landini said the union was speaking to “the whole country”, not a faction, and that he cared whether wages rose and waiting lists shortened.

Below the stage the opposition leaders posed: Elly Schlein (PD), Giuseppe Conte (M5S), Nicola Fratoianni and Angelo Bonelli. Schlein spoke of “the spirit of the referendum”. Conte told Giorgia Meloni’s government to go, or at least to show courage in the budget law. Their presence does not turn the march into a party congress; Landini kept his distance.

Meloni was not on the route. The government’s reaction that day was aimed at the violence in the north, not Piazza del Popolo. The two pictures should not be mixed. This article is not a strike call and is not an election programme.

Image: Krzysztof Golik, Piazza del Popolo, Rome, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; the square at the end of the march, archive, not the 17 October 2026 rally.

Sources consulted: La Via maestra in piazza a Roma: Lavoro, pace, Costituzione - ANSA; La Via maestra a Roma, la Cgil in piazza. Landini: 20 novembre sciopero generale - la Repubblica.