Massimo D'Alema (born April 20, 1949), the son of Giuseppe D'Alema (an esteemed communist politician), is an Italian journalist and politician, a former prime minister and a former national secretary of the PDS, Partito Democratico della Sinistra.

A professional politician, in the sense that politics has been his main work during all his life, he comes from the PCI, Italian Communist Party, part of which later gave origin to his current party, and in the 1990s became Head of the government, after the "Tangentopoli" (or "Clean hands") scandals, as the leader of the "Olive Tree" leftist coalition.

In the internal life of his party, mostly during its transition from PCI to PDS, D'Alema stressed that its Communist leanings should be softened, or even replaced by an opening toward Catholic forces, somehow leaving aside the Marxist provenance.

He has been the director of "L'Unità", the official PCI's newspaper.

External links

• Personal website
• A biography in Spanish