Not quite maltempo
Plus, Brian Molko's outburst and a bumper edition of the Cortona photography festival
Heatwaves, fires and storms are part and parcel of Italian summer and, to a certain extent, they always have been. But not like this. On Monday, the city of Palermo, in Sicily, registered 47 degrees Celsius. South Sardinia reached 45 degrees. Rome was 42 degrees and Florence 40 degrees. Wildfires - which took a while to get going this year due to heavy spring rains - are now in full swung. In Palermo, flames arrived well into the city suburbs while people watched-on in horror. Nearby hamlets have been burnt down; the airport has been unable to function. Similar, smaller-scale episodes, are taking place, as I write this, across Campania. In the North, meanwhile, after weeks and weeks of extreme heatwave, small incursions of cold air have had devastating consequences. While Palermo was burning, residents in Forli’ were sheltering from a tornado. While citizens of Bari sweated away, Milan was being bombarded by hailstones the size of fists. Hundreds of trees have fallen down; there have been several deaths. Meloni has conceded that the climate is “unpredictable” (a cop out, of course, given that scientific models have long predicted consequences of global warming), but those around her have been taciturn or worse. Every night, negationists are given space on prime time TV. Meloni’s partner Andrea Giambruno recently stated that climate change "is not news”; Matteo Salvini has called on green critics to “stop their eco-terrorism." Nello Musumeci, the right wing Minister of Civic Protection, is seemingly alone among his peers in having anything sensible to say. On Monday, at the peak of fires so far, he acknowledged: “this is the most difficult moment we’ve faced for a decade […] climate change is not just a contingency. Italy must realise that it now has a tropical climate and act accordingly to guarantee the wellbeing of citizens.” The question is, will his coalition allies really hear the message?
The struggle over the minimum wage looks set to be Italy’s defining parliamentary contest of summer 2023. In case you’re not up to speed on such matters: Italy is one of just six EU countries that has no minimum wage (though, to be precise, while under Italian law there is not a statutory minimum wage, most workers are actually covered by a minimum wage agreement, established through collective bargaining.) This month, with this in mind, the opposition parties, led by Elly Schlein’s PD and the M5S, drafted a joint proposal for a bill that would introduce a 9 euro per hour minimum wage. Advocates argue that this should “guarantee adequate earnings for workers, especially those in conditions of poverty in part because of inflation." Meloni opposes the measure on the basis that a) it might encourage employers to reduce renumeration of some middle class workers and b) it won’t impact on the precarious workforce. My take? A minimum wage is not a fix-all solution but it is still necessary. According to a recent OECD report, real wages in Italy have fallen by 7% since the pandemic and this is particularly true of women (who are of course repeatedly and structurally underpaid). Whether or not the proposed bill gets through to a vote, this draft proposal is a rare and encouraging sign of cooperation between the PD and M5S which might yet provide some concrete basis for a future electoral alliance or even a governmental programme (one can dream).
I was in Lucca the other week to catch one of my favourite alt rock bands, Placebo, playing at the summer festival. It was a great show, and, as a fan, I can only recommend you all listen to their latest album Never Let me Go. Since then, however, the singer Brian Molko has found himself in some hot water with Italian authorities due to remarks he made during another gig at the Sonic Park festival in Stupinigi outside Turin. During a gap between songs, Molko offered some fairly crude political commentary from the stage during which he called the PM Georgia Meloni a “fascist, racist, piece of shit.” Generally, this could be considered within the boundaries of artistic free speech. Not in today’s Italy, apparently. After the gig, local carabinieri reported Molko to the legal authorities and, as a result, the local procura has opened a formal criminal investigation into the singer on the charge of “defaming the republic.” If Molko is found guilty he will face a modest fine of €1,000 to €5,000. Symbolically, though, this is a depressing story. Right wing activists are currently attempting to disrupt Placebo’s future tour dates, and in Sassari, where the band is scheduled to perform another concert on 1 August, local councillors are calling for the entire event to be cancelled. This is a pretty bizarre story, but it’s also a good indicator of where Italian society is right now: caught between chilling authoritarianism and superficial, petty populism of the worst kind. Yuck.
Arts and culture: High Definition
From Mario Nigro’s show at Milan’s Museo del Novecento to Yan Pei-Ming at Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi there are plenty of art exhibits to check out in Italy this summer. Personally, though, I’m particularly intrigued by Cortona’s “On the Move” festival. This photography and documentary extravaganza, which takes place every year from July to October, is a diffused event which is spread out across one of Tuscany’s most beautiful medieval towns. This year Paolo Woods, the Dutch–Canadian curator, best known for his work with National Geographic, has chosen social injustice as the overall theme. Under the title “More Or Less” he’s gathered together the work of some of Italy’s finest photographers including Massimo Vitali’s shots of crowds and public spaces, Marco Garofalo’s profiles of young people in Milan, Rome, and Naples and Marco Zanella’s landscapes of the Romagna countryside. The centrepiece, however, is an international selection of works focusing on rappers from around the world (and the UK and USA in particular) which are gathered here under the title “Get Rich or Die Tryin’”. What else can I say? If you’re travelling around Italy this summer I highly recommend a pitstop in Cortona. If you’re not, this interview with Woods in The Guardian is nevertheless a must read about the ethics of documentary photography and how to face-up to the problem of “poverty porn.”
Attention all you art history fans out there! This week the digital archiving website Haltadefinizione finalized a new collaboration with the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria to mark the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of the Renaissance painter Perugino. What this means, concretely, is that 18 of the painter’s most famous canvases – including his masterpieces Lo Sposalizio della Vergine, l’Adorazione dei Magi, la Pietà del Farneto – are available to view in High Definition online for free! OK, this might not sound like much, but just wait until you see the uploads. The Haltadefinizione team has used cutting edge gigapixel technology to map the works down to an infinitesimal level of detail. The end result is that users anywhere in the world - without gatekeeping or passwords or geoblocks or any of that nonsense - can observe these artworks with the aid of highly advanced zooms. Even on a dodgy old macbook the colours and textures and physical grooves in the paint are crystal clear; and I for one found it breathtaking to be able to examine the works in such close detail. Click here to access the archive and explore for yourself.
Recipe: Nick Anderer’s Spaghetti with Garlic and Olive Oil
I’m a big fan of the classic southern pasta dish aglio, olio e pepperoncino. Garlic, oil, chili and parsley, flash fried and tossed through spaghetti. It’s one of the simplest dishes imaginable but somehow manages to offer a real depth of flavour, a complexity and balance that is totally satisfying for a summer lunch when you don’t want to linger too long above the stove. As with any simple dish, technique is vital here. Risks, in this case, include a burnt, bitter tasting sauce, lack of emulsification, sticky-starchy pasta or a watery soup. Nick Anderer has good instructions in Saveur magazine to avoid such outcomes, which, as per tradition, involve cooking the sauce in the short time that the pasta is boiling. His method and chronology are spot on here. For my money though, I’d advise you to up the quantity of all the major ingredients. You can get away with LOT of garlic, a LOT of chilli and a LOT of oil here; about twice as much, in fact, as Anderer suggests. South Italians would never dream of topping with cheese, but – as he suggests – if you have some Grana on hand it does make an excellent topping and really brings the flavours together. Serve with a glass of minerally white – a Sicilian Malvasia? – for a delicious, refreshing wine pairing.
About Me
My name is Jamie Mackay (@JacMackay) and I’m an author, editor and translator based in Florence. I’ve been writing about Italy for a decade for international media including The Guardian, The Economist, Frieze, and Art Review. I launched ‘The Week in Italy’ to share a more direct and regular overview of the debates and dilemmas, innovations and crises that sometimes pass under the radar of our overcrowded news feeds.
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