80 years of fervent identity: the Associazione Nazionale Paracadutisti d’Italia between memory and continuity (1946–2026)

The A.N.P.d’I. has just turned 80 years since its inception. It is not just any anniversary: it is a measure of time necessary to understand if an idea is truly solid, useful, alive. In eighty years, the Association has not simply “endured”; it has held together people, values, memory, and the future of Italian Parachuting, even when the social, political, and military context changed profoundly.

Be careful because the Military Associations have an extremely delicate task: not to replace the Armed Forces, not to engage in politics, not to indulge in nostalgia. Their value lies in preserving and transmitting a sense of belonging, animated by a deep and sincere passion.

The A.N.P.d’I. does this according to a tradition and an identity that are its own.

The Military Association where values are preserved and transmitted

Tradition and identity with an unmistakable style because it is the Military Association of Parachutists: men and women who have internalized an idea of service based on discipline, responsibility, daring, and esprit de corps. When the uniform is put away, those values do not disappear; they risk being dispersed. The Association is the place where they continue to be practiced, not just remembered.

Founded on January 11, 1946, as API (Associazione Paracadutisti Italiani), it was officially recognized by decree of the President of the Republic No. 620 of February 10, 1956 and identified by the 2010 regulations as the only associative body dedicated to Italian Parachutists, the A.N.P.d’I. is also among the founders of the European Union of Parachutists.

We are not dealing with a legal detail: the History of the A.N.P.d’I. is the reflection of a credibility built over time, in the consistency between what is declared and what is done. The Association welcomes Parachutists who are ex-combatants, in service, retired, or people from the civilian world who simply wish to approach the world of our Specialty, maintaining a clear identity threshold: real, not symbolic belonging.

The heart of the A.N.P.d’I. is generational continuity. In over 130 sections spread across the national territory, yesterday's Parachutist meets today's. Not to tell stories about themselves, but to transmit experience. Memory here is not sterile celebration: it is a criterion.

It serves to understand why certain traditions exist, why certain gestures matter, why the language of the Specialty is not folklore but a synthesis of an operational and human culture born in that August of 1918, when a young Lieutenant Alessandro Tandura did something that was then unthinkable: he jumped behind enemy lines with a parachute, effectively entering the history of military parachuting.

Here tradition is not only inherited: it is born.

We are the country that, after the battery with Volta and the radio with Marconi, has also written a foundational page that is the heritage of all Italians.

And it is also for this reason that, over the decades, the Association has maintained a structured and respectful relationship with the units, collaborating in training, disseminating history, and caring for anniversaries. Because parachute training has always been a means, not an end: what matters is the transmission of the values that make it possible.

Courage and discipline are not slogans; they are habits cultivated over time, even in civilian life.

Social presence understood not as visibility, but as responsibility

There is also an often underestimated aspect: the A.N.P.d’I. is a social presence. It is so when it supports civil protection initiatives, when it supports members in difficulty, when it invests in scholarships, when it publishes and disseminates historical and technical culture through the magazine Folgore and the official website (www.assopar.it).

It is the way in which the ethics of service continue to produce concrete effects, away from the spotlight.

Today the Association is led by Marco Bertolini, General of the Army Corps (ret.), Parachutist Incursor.

A leadership that embodies the direct link between operational experience, respect for institutions, and awareness of the cultural role that a Military Association must have in the present and the future.

Joining the A.N.P.d’I. on its eightieth anniversary is not a formal gesture. It is a choice of responsibility. It means recognizing that the parachutist identity is not confined to the past, but lives in the way one is in society: with measure, with loyalty, with a sense of duty.

The A.N.P.d’I. is not only the glue between the Parachutists of yesterday and those of today; it is also the Association, the only one, that keeps alive, in civilian life, the profound meaning of being an Italian Parachutist.

Eighty years after its birth, the value of the A.N.P.d’I. is measured in this way: in continuity more than in noise, in example more than in rhetoric.