Francesca Calvo

Francesca Calvo (May 17, 1949 – April 30, 2003) was an Italian politician and the mayor of Alessandria from 1993 to 2002. She was the first woman to hold the office of mayor of the city. A member of Lega Nord during most of her mayoralty, Calvo was elected in the first direct mayoral election held in Alessandria under the new Italian local-government electoral system introduced in the early 1990s.

Her administration is mainly associated with the management of the flood that struck Alessandria during her first year in office, and with the subsequent reconstruction of the city.

Francesca Calvo was born on May 17, 1949 in Turin, Italy. She is the only daughter of Giorgio Calvo, a bank manager, and his wife, Piera Calvo (née Gagliardi). Her family originated from Turin, then moved to Alessandria. She attended Liceo scientifico Galileo Galilei and later enrolled in the Faculty of Law at University of Turin.

Calvo was married to Marquis Luciano Buzzi Langhi. They had 2 children together, Davide and Mario.

Calvo began her political career in the 1980s, she first joined Italian Liberal Party. In 1993, she was the candidate for the office of mayor of Alessandria, winning the ballot against the candidate of the Democratic Party of the Left, Andrea Ferrari. During her first year of being the mayor, she found herself having to manage the situation caused by Tanaro flood in 1994 [it] and the consequent reconstruction. In 1997, she was re-elected as the mayor, at the head of a coalition containing the Northern League, Padan Workers and Free Alessandria, obtaining 58.1% of the votes against Mario Ivaldi.

In 1999, she was expelled from the Northern League after having defended Domenico Comino. She joined Piemont, movement founded by Comino, the person she defended, which federated with the Autonomists for Europe. She was the candidate for the presidency of the Piedmont region in 2000, obtaining only 2.58% of the votes.

In the following years, she moved closer to the League, obtaining a position from Roberto Castelli, minister of justice in the Second Berlusconi government, and heading a list with her own name in support of Oreste Rossi, candidate of the House of Freedoms for mayor of Alessandria in 2002.

Calvo was proclaimed mayor of Alessandria in 1993 and served two consecutive terms, remaining in office until 2002. Local press accounts described her as the first woman to lead the municipality.

During the first months of her administration, Calvo reorganized parts of the municipal administration and began urban-maintenance works, including road resurfacing and interventions connected to public spaces and urban furniture. Her time in office also included work on municipal planning, including the approval of a new urban plan and a traffic plan.

On 6 November 1994, less than a year after Calvo became mayor, Alessandria was hit by a severe flood of the Tanaro river. Local accounts identify the disaster as one of the most serious floods in the history of the city, causing deaths and heavy damage in several districts.

Calvo became closely associated with the city's response to the emergency and the subsequent reconstruction. A 2003 report on her death stated that she was known above all for having faced the 1994 flood emergency, while a 2013 commemoration stated that she pressed for compensation funds for private citizens and for funds needed for reconstruction. In 2024, on the 30th anniversary of the flood, local media again recalled her role as mayor during the disaster.

Calvo was re-elected mayor in the 1997 municipal election. n the first round, she received 37.3% of the vote as candidate for mayor; in the run-off, she defeated Mario Ivaldi and was re-elected with 58.1%. The lists supporting her included Lega Nord, Lavoratori Padani and Alessandria Libera; in the first round these lists received 20.4%, 4.4% and 3.7% respectively.

Her second term included continuing urban projects and cultural infrastructure. A 2013 local commemoration stated that works connected to the civic library, later named after her, began during these years, together with other projects including the Ponte Meier project and public events.

After her re-election, Calvo later broke with Lega Nord and became associated with the autonomist political area linked to Autonomists for Europe. In 2000, she ran for president of the Piedmont Region for the Polo Federalista. According to the electoral archive of the Italian Ministry of the Interior, she received 62,288 votes, equal to 2.58% of the regional vote.

The Piedmont Regional Council's electoral observatory also records Calvo as the Polo Federalista candidate in the 2000 regional election and gives the same regional total of 62,288 votes and 2.58%.

In the 2002 municipal election in Alessandria, Calvo was no longer mayoral candidate but remained politically active. Local reporting after her death stated that she was elected to the municipal council in 2002 and later took a role in the secretariat of Roberto Castelli, who was Minister of Justice in the second Berlusconi government. Radio Radicale's archive lists several recordings involving Calvo between 1998 and 2002, including appearances connected with ANCI meetings, the 2000 regional election campaign, Autonomists for Europe, and the 2002 Alessandria municipal election campaign.

Calvo passed away on April 30, 2003 by a serious illness at Pavia Hospital at the age of 53, shortly before her 54th birthday. Reports at the time stated that she had been admitted for treatment for an illness diagnosed a few months earlier. A memorial mass was held in Alessandria in 2013 on the tenth anniversary of her death. Further commemorations were held in later years, including events marking the twentieth anniversary of her death in 2023.

For her legacy, the civic library of the city of Alessandria is named after her.

The civic library of Alessandria is named the Biblioteca civica Francesca Calvo. The library is a public municipal library belonging to the Comune di Alessandria and is listed by the Italian national library registry with ISIL code IT-AL0002. According to the registry, the library had 190,699 items in its holdings in the most recent reported data, including manuscripts, serials, audiovisual documents and microforms.

Calvo has also been commemorated locally through public remembrance events. In 2021, Radio Gold included her in a series on women from Alessandria, identifying her as the first woman mayor of the city. In 2024, local media revisited her words from the 1994 flood and included comments from her son, Davide Buzzi Langhi, thirty years after the disaster.