Piedmont Governor Alberto Cirio on Thursday became embroiled in a row after he was accused of praising Fascism's cult of physical fitness.
The centre-right governor bemoaned the lack of PE classes in postwar Italian schools as what he called a "reaction" to the 20-year dictatorship's focus on caring for the body.
"Sporting activity has been completely neglected in postwar Italy," said Cirio, a member of former premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservative Forza Italia (FI) party.
"In Fascist times there was great attention for looking after the body, and sport was important in schools.
"After the dictatorship fell, as a reaction, sporting activity was cancelled from schools." Italian students do much less PE than their counterparts in other countries, and sport is primarily an after-school activity.
Speaking at the inauguration of a KInder Joy of Moving Park in Novara, set up with the help of the Ferrero confectionery group, Ciro recalled that when he was regional sport councillor he set up a project with Ferrero and the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) that brought specialised sports instructors into schools.
The Joy of Moving Park is part of Ferrero's drive to help programmes that fight child obesity.
Cirio was accused by leftwing politicians of being nostalgic for Fascism.
Centre-left Democratic Party (PD) MP Filippo Sensi said Cirio should not be "nostalgic for the body culture in Fascist times (and trains on time, by chance?), because there are still a lot of Fascists around today".
Leftist Italian Left leader Nicola Fratoianni, of the leftwing Free and Equal (LeU) party, said: "I see that the Piedmont governor has nostalgia for the care for the body the Fascist regime had. I fear he is referring to the treatment based on truncheons and castor oil meted out to the regime's opponents, who were defending democracy and freedom." Cirio denied the accusations saying "anyone who is from Alba, like me, has anti-Fascism in their DNA.
"I only reconstructed historically why gymnastics is no longer taught in Italy.
"The reason lies in Fascism, which pushed care of the body to the extreme.
"When the regime fell, perhaps by an opposite effect, physical education was abandoned. But I certainly didn't mean to praise Fascism".
The row came amid shock in Italy over the street beating death of a 21-year-old Cape-Verdian-Italian allegedly by a gang including two brothers who practised mixed martial arts, in what some have termed a Fascist-like attack.
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