“He pressed the stop button on the lift… and we kissed,” recalls Barbara Agostino, a smile on her lips. “I thought he was handsome and he had gorgeous blue eyes.” It’s almost like a scene from a film, as described by the former captain of the national football team. Suspended between two floors, the eight-year-old girl was literally savouring the moment. “He was the only boy I ever really loved. Well, it was a platonic love. A beautiful friendship.”

Barbara says she has always been attracted to girls and recalls, not without humour, her mother’s cousin who would hug her affectionately. “She had quite a generous bust”, she says with a laugh. “I was too young to understand what I was feeling… but there was already something there. I didn’t really try to understand what was going on inside me either; I suppressed it all.”

The weight of family traditions

Coming from an Italian family with traditions, values and rules that are almost sacred — even conservative — homosexuality remains a taboo subject. “These are rules that are passed down from generation to generation and which we follow to the letter”, explains the 43-year-old MP today.

As a young girl, she couldn’t talk about it for fear of upsetting the family balance. “I forbade myself from doing so.” At the age of 19, however, she had her first secret romance, until the day her aunt realised what was going on. “She told me, ‘You’re going to see a psychologist, or I’ll tell your mother everything.’” Fearing a family scandal, she agreed.

The psychologist reassured her aunt that everything was fine with Barbara, but the hardest part was yet to come.

“In Italian families, on Sundays, the mamma, the nonna and all the women in the family prepare the Sunday meal together. And whilst we’re kneading the dough, we chat, we confide in one another and we talk about everything.” It was in this very intimate and exclusively female atmosphere that Barbara came out.

Her great-grandmother, then aged 90, cuts short any further discussion. “Is she ill? Is she on drugs? Is she an alcoholic? No. She loves a woman – so what?” She was, in the end, the most open-minded of them all, recalls Barbara.

“My father, who’s from Calabria, wanted to throw me out.” But her mother stepped in. “She’s our daughter! If anyone’s to leave the house, it’s you!”

Despite these painful and trying experiences, Barbara speaks of a sense of liberation.