On Wednesday evening, the city council of Salò, in the province of Brescia, authorized the revocation of honorary citizenship to Benito Mussolini, which was bestowed more than 100 years ago. Every year, there are news of municipalities removing Benito Mussolini's honorary citizenship; nevertheless, this time is different: Salò and the nearby towns on Lake Garda were the center of the Italian Social Republic (RSI), the fascist regime controlled by Nazi Germany that governed northern Italy after the armistice of September 8, 1943, during World War II. Mussolini was granted honorary citizenship on May 23, 1924, not by the municipal council (which had been dissolved) but by the prefectural commissioner, Salvatore Punzo, who had been dispatched to Salò in 1919 to establish the local branch of the Fascist Party. In the interim, fascism had assumed power in Italy, transforming it into a totalitarian regime. Until 2024, Salò was controlled by the center-right, who had never considered revocation and rejected it when proposed by the minority. This was the third occasion on which the revocation of Mussolini's honorific citizenship was proposed; but the first under a center-left mayor.