Vaccines, toxic waste and Dante's Inferno
Here's to 2021
Hello and welcome to the first ever edition of ‘The Week in Italy.’ Thanks for being here. Inevitably, with COVID-19 lockdowns ongoing in many parts of the world, the pandemic is dominating many of our minds, our worries, and most of the newspaper headlines. In Italy the new tier systems are still being finalised (red, orange and ‘reinforced yellow’ whatever that means) but it looks like for better or worse the country is moving towards slightly more relaxed containment measures in many regions from 15 January. I’ll have more detailed updates next week. In the meantime, though, besides contagion rates, which are back on the rise at a worrying rate of around 14%, there are a few things worth paying attention to…
News: Vaccine rollout picks up pace
Since the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was authorized in Europe last December there’s been a scramble to get doses out as quickly as possible. As of Saturday morning, Italy has vaccinated the most individuals of any EU member state, with 504,000 doses administered, followed by Germany on 476,959 [Source AGENAS]. Something to keep in mind, though, is that much of the Italian immunity strategy depends on distributing the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab, and supply of this product is likely to have a decisive effect on the overall effort. In related news, Italy’s own domestically produced vaccine, ReiThera, passed stage one of testing on 5 January with 92% effectiveness.Â
MPs in Palazzo Chigi remain at loggerheads over the Covid-19 economic recovery plan, the so called ‘piano di ripartire’. As things stand the PM Giuseppe Conte has facilitated an agreement among the leading coalition partners, the Five Star Movement and Partito Democratico, for a ‘green, sustainable future’ - investing in sectors that promise digital and environmental friendly models of innovation. Matteo Renzi and Italia Viva, however, are threatening to veto the plan, claiming it does not dedicate enough to healthcare, and is a means of Conte over-centralising executive powers by stealth. Renzi’s party is polling at 3%, but is key to the government maintaining its majority. It’s hard, with this in mind, to see these objections as anything other than an ill-judged and badly-timed power jostle on the part of the ex-PM. Hannah Roberts has written a detailed and rather scathing analysis of the showdown for POLITICO here which is well-worth a read.
On Tuesday, SOGIN (a national organisation dedicated to managing radioactive waste) published a map proposing new sites for nuclear dumps. As you can see below, the plan outlines possible new waste disposal facilities in Piemonte, Liguria, Puglia, Sicily and Sardinia (which, on account of its relatively sparse population, is often mooted for these kinds of projects). Some of the most contentious proposals, though, regard a cluster of sites in the south of Tuscany, and north of Lazio, which is home to some of Italy’s most beautiful and wild countryside as well as some of the country’s cleanest beaches. Legambiente, the environmentalist campaigning organisation, is planning to contest the project.Â
Art and culture: the year of DanteÂ
As you’ve probably read, 2021 marks 700 years since the death of Italy’s national poet. Over the next twelve months a whole host of events, newspaper features and publications will be working to celebrate the occasion. One of the first and most noteworthy initiatives has just been launched in Florence, Dante’s home city, where the Uffizi Galleries are hosting a virtual exhibition of the Renaissance artist Federico Zuccari’s illustrations of the Divine Comedy. All 88 of these rarely seen images are available to view online here, and they’re rather wonderful.Â
Netflix overload is a thing, I know. As far as Italy is concerned though, viewers may still wish to bookmark SanPa by Gianluca Neri, which came out on 30 December. This series of five documentary films concerns the community of San Patrignano; a controversial rehab centre which was set up in the 1970s by Vincenzo Muccioli to tackle heroin addiction but which was at the centre of accusations of abuse. It’s a disturbing tale about megalomania and the psychology of subservience which contextualises the community as being symptomatic of the political turmoil of that decade. Check out the trailer below, with English subtitles.
Finally, on a lighter note, in case you missed it doing the rounds on social media last week, the Russian talkshow host Ivan Urgant saw in the new year in strange fashion with a one hour TV special called ‘Ciao2020’, in which, for some inexplicable reason, he decided to satirise Italian 80s style cabaret (with admirable dedication.) The whole show is narrated in a strange mix of Slavicised Italian, and for all its exaggeration it’s uncannily accurate. Click here - if you’re really short of things to do - to watch the surreal cast including ‘la soldinetta’, ‘piccolo grandi’ and ‘cream de la soda’ relentlessly tearing apart the kitsch fashion that so dominates Italy’s mass media culture.
Recipe of the week - Chickpea, leek and fennel soup
January is a time of year when for all the virtue signalling you really want to eat something hearty. One of my go-to dishes is a particularly head-clearing ’Vellutata di finocchio’; a blended fennel, potato and saffron soup, which I promise is far more than the sum of its parts (I use Misya’s recipe). The closest I’ve found in English is Russel Norman’s in Polpo which adds chickpeas, and if you don’t own his rather wonderful book it’s online here.Â
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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.Â
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