The people of Reggio blamed their rivals' success on "the Red Barons" in Rome, a group of influential centre-left Calabrian politicians from Cosenza and Catanzaro, including Deputy Prime Minister Giacomo Mancini.

Strikes, barricades and wrecked railway tracks forced trains from the north of Italy to halt two hours short of Reggio.

When the port of Reggio was blocked, hundreds of lorries and railroad freight cars were forced to remain on the other side of the Straits of Messina.

Party and union headquarters were bombed, as well as the cars of politicians accused of treason and shops because they did not join the strikes.

After three police officers were shot and wounded in October 1970, Prime Minister Emilio Colombo decided to tackle the conflict.

[3] Tensions subsided for a while, but new protests and violence broke out in January 1971 when the Parliament decided that the regional assembly had to designate the capital of Calabria.

[15] At the time, Italian authorities suspected that a bomb had caused the crash and sent troops to guard Calabrian railways.

[17] In February 2001, a court in Palmi, Calabria found that Vito Silverini, Vincenzo Caracciolo, and Giuseppe Scarcella (all deceased at the time) had planted the bomb.

[8] The so-called Colombo Package (named after then Prime minister Emilio Colombo) offering to build the Fifth Steelwork Centre in Reggio including a railroad stump and the port in Gioia Tauro, an investment of 3 billion lire which would create 10,000 jobs, softened the people of Reggio and helped to quell the revolt.

Issues of employment (the capital meant safe jobs in an economically depressed city) and local pride intermingled; it was mainly a matter of identity.

The neo-fascists benefitted, because the Christian Democrats were divided, while the city was one of its fiefdoms, and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) supported the suppression of the riots.