Matteo Renzi’s chicken coup
Matteo Renzi’s chicken coup
For the few, not the many
At 18:20 yesterday evening, at a press conference live-streamed on Facebook, Italy’s ex-Prime Minister formally inaugurated what can now legitimately be called a political crisis. Despite the severity of the health emergency, and urgent need to provide assistance to thousands of Italians that are being lurched into poverty even as I type this, Renzi’s party, Italia Viva, which is polling at just 2.5%, pulled their support from the ruling coalition. Their stated motivation? To push Conte to take high interest loans from the EU - with probable clauses of future austerity - in order to prop-up the health service. 73% of Italians, however, believe Renzi is acting in “personal interest” [source]. What this means, and what that interest might be, will become clearer in the next few days. In the meantime Conte now has to form a new majority, which looks like it may be a challenge. Many fear, with some justification, that Italy is back on the now familiar roundabout of political entropy: a technocratic national interest government followed by early elections. Personally I’d say it’s best to let the dust settle before rushing to any conclusions…
In related news: on Tuesday, just 24 hours before Renzi’s dramatic and seemingly self-destructive move, the Conte government approved a final draft of the Covid-19 recovery plan which, by the standard of most Italian budgets, actually seems fairly inspired. The economic package - made up of grants and low interest loans directly from the ECB - includes EUR 46 million of subsidies to support arts and culture, an extensive programme of investment to promote youth employment (with targets for gender equality) as well as plans to dramatically improve green and digital infrastructure. There are countless criticisms that might and should be made of both the PD and M5S but this is without doubt the most impressive piece of legislation the coalition has yet conceived. Sadly, without the backing of Italia Viva’s two parliamentarians (yes, they only have two) this unexpectedly coherent programme is now at risk. Even if some version does make its way through the two chambers, there are real reasons to doubt the country has sufficient political consensus to enact the promises.
On Wednesday morning, just before this mess took over the headlines, prosecutors in Calabria inaugurated the trial of over 300 members of the local mafia, the ndrangheta (pronounced en-drahn-get-ah). People often think of the Calabrian mob as a small fry organisation. In reality the ndrangheta is far larger, and nowadays generally more dangerous, than Sicily’s Cosa Nostra. Some estimates suggest as many as 27% of Calabrians collaborate in some shape or form with this particular manifestation of the mafia [source]. Proceedings will probably take around two years, and while there’s no possibility of the judges destroying the organisation altogether, they have a rare opportunity here to delegitimise it. John Dickie, the historian and occasional documentary maker, has written a useful twitter thread on the background to the trials that’s well-worth checking out, as is this short film he produced a few years ago about the mafia’s secret bunkers.
On 6 January the world watched in shock as several thousand Trump supporters ‘besieged’ the U.S. Capitol building. Among those who joined the rally were adherents of Q; the conspiracy theorist who maintains that the world is being secretly ruled by a left wing pedophile cult. Oddly enough Italy now has an unusually central role in these peoples’ ideas. According to some of Q’s followers it was none other than Matteo Renzi (clearly the man of the moment) who was in charge of masterminding what they see as the U.S. election fraud; specifically, so the story goes, he and other EU politicians, used satellite tech to intervene in the count. In other versions it was apparently none other than Pope Francis that masterminded the plot against Trump. These patently false stories are still trending under the hashtag #Italygate, and are being reproduced in Italian and English on various alt. right blogs with inexplicable speed [I will not be linking to them].
During the first wave of the pandemic, many people - myself included - were comparing maps of air pollution and Covid-19 death rates and wondering if there might be a connection. A new study by CNR e Arpa Lombardia has confirmed that this is not the case. Their findings are important, and demonstrate that scientists must still do more to understand why the epidemic has proved so fatal in Northern Italy. Leaving this report aside, though, it’s still worth remembering that the pianura padana is one of most polluted parts of Europe. Approximately 80,000 people die prematurely from exposure to PM2,5 and N02 molecules each year, mainly in and around Turin and Milan. Certainly, looking at the satellite images, it would difficult to overstate the scale and severity of the smog problem.
Art and culture: Tuscan fairy tales
As I write this Italy is already home to the most UNESCO world heritage sites of any country in the world. Nevertheless, six further sites are vying for consideration to be awarded protected status this year. These include Bologna’s beautiful medieval porticoes, the Collio vineyards in Friuli Venezia Giulia and Sardinia’s megalithic nuraghi: primitive structures which some archaeologists have dated to 1900 B.C. Italy magazine has the full details.
Before Christmas, a friend of mine, Lori Hetherington, who works as translator, released a book she’s been working on for a long time now. Tuscan Tales collects together the fables of Emma Perodi, a writer, editor and journalist, born in 1850, and one of very few women to have succeeded in publishing for mass audiences in 19th Century Italy. Her stories, which overlap with Italo Calvino’s well-known anthology, contain “skeletons and phantoms, scoundrels and saints, supernatural events and magical objects,” while offering a feminist-inflected revision of familiar fables. The e-book and paperback editions are available to order now, shipping worldwide, from all the major platforms.
Recipe of the week: Pollo alla Toscana
Rachel Roddy has a fine recipe in the Guardian this week for something she calls Tuscan style chicken. It’s a simple dish, adapted from Anna Gosetti Della Salda’s seminal 1967 book, Le ricette regionali italiane. Think mushrooms and wine, like a coq au vin, but, with copious amounts of sage (which does indeed make the dish more or less identifiable with Central Italy). I made it last night, accompanied by a large portion of buttery polenta, and can confirm that this is a potent and highly effective means of keeping the crisis blues at bay.
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About Me
My name is Jamie Mackay and I’m a writer, 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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