Two Italies
Two Italies
Browsing the forums of Italy Mag I was surprised to see postings from what seems like hordes of Anglo Saxon visitors swapping comments about buying or relocating to the south of Italy, an area that for at least 100 years the indigenous inhabitants have been fleeing in search of a better life. I was born in the south and my parents, like many of their generation left their village in Puglia for Tuscany in search of work. By the South I mean the regions of Puglia, Calabria, Campania and Sicily – Italy’s Mezzogiorno (The Land of Midday Sun). The physical distance between the two regions is 800kms (500 miles), the cultural distance is immeasurable.
It is true that we are all Italians. We are predominantly Catholic, we speak Italian -though in further flung villages throughout the peninsula this is debatable. My brother in law cannot understand my father when he is speaking in dialect, though my two year old Tuscan niece understands her maternal Puglian and paternal Tuscan grandparents equally well.
There is a sense of national pride which exists when Italy is competing in any sport at an International level. But there the similarities end. Whereas the north is largely industrialized with easy access to Northern European markets, the south is largely agricultural and is one of the poorest regions in Europe.
Unemployment in the South stands at 13.6%, four times that of the North. There is a tremendous brain drain as the talented, educated young people leave the south for exactly the same reason as my parents. The Northern League, a major political party, advocates jettisoning the south and creating an independent Northern State. And yet, for all the problems of infrastructure, economy and poor standards of living, the south boasts a beauty and a quality of life that government statistics cannot measure and I suspect that is why, apart from being an attractive investment opportunity, Northern Europeans are arriving in droves to the heel of Italy. The weather is great, there is a history that straddles the ancient Greek civilization, the Roman Empire, the Saracens and even the Normans (witness the odd redhead) and the tempo of life beats to a mercifully slower pace than the one we are accustomed to. All good reasons to return to what was once the heart of the Mediterrenean basin.felix