MADRID AND ROME — For better and for worse, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has revolutionized Italy during the last 15 years, toppling walls between government and business, media and ideology, traditional parties and maverick movements.
As the uproar over Berlusconi's latest public battle with his wife demonstrated Monday, his personality-driven, loose-cannon style at times sweeps away the boundaries between serious politics and personal gossip as well.
On Sunday, Veronica Lario, 52, announced that she had decided to divorce Berlusconi, 72, after 19 years of marriage. She told La Repubblica newspaper that she was disgusted by his plans to run a slate of television "showgirls" for elections to the European Parliament. She expressed suspicion about his relationship with a business associate's daughter, whose 18th birthday party he recently attended. And she denounced her husband's seeming political impunity.
"Through a strange alchemy, the country concedes and justifies everything to its emperor," Lario said, according to the newspaper.
Berlusconi quickly returned fire Monday in the Corriere della Sera newspaper. He demanded an apology from his wife and said he might sue her for insinuating something "sordid" about his friendship with the teen.
The three female candidates running in the elections might be attractive, the prime minister said, but they had sterling credentials and only one had worked in television. He described his wife as the dupe of a plot by his opponents on the left.
"Veronica fell into a media trap," he declared. "It's the third time she's played a trick like this during an election campaign. It's really too much."
Italy has plunged raucously into the debate over the latest episode of a singular soap opera of a career. Berlusconi whirls from scandal to faux pas and back again, seeming to speak and act without reflection or remorse. A previous clash with his wife occurred two years ago when he told a television starlet whom he has since named minister of equal opportunity: "I'd go anywhere with you, even to a desert isle. If I weren't already married, I would marry you right away."
But such antics, analysts say, mask a masterful strategist. He created a robust center-right coalition that included, besides his own, two parties formerly opposed to the system, the National Alliance and the Northern League, leaving the opposition a shambles.
