Umberto's Blog

Italy, seen from Switzerland

I have been asked by several foreign friends of mine to volunteer my opinion about the present, peculiar state of Italy. Mainly as a consequence of the elections and of their unprecedented tight result. No doubt, I will be asked much more sophisticated questions by my friend Alexis Lautenberg,the Swiss ambassador in London and former Swiss ambassador in Rome, when I shall meet him for lunch at his embassy in a couple of weeks.
Whereas with Italians it is easy to turn an answer into a joke - escaping answers that is - this exercise is impossible with sophisticated foreign observers. The standard answer I give, as a voter for the center-right, is that whatever happens next, I prefer not to think at what would have happened in Italy had the outcome of the elections been reversed, with Silvio Berlusconi's coalition winning by a margin of a few thousands votes, like the center-left actually did. I can see the unions and the radical left taking to the streets, the economy grinding to a halt... Better this way, by far. Even for Silvio Berlusconi himself, who looked indeed elated to those who saw him over the week-end in Trieste - where he sang Neapolitan songs at a political party - and in Porto Rotondo (Sardinia) where he chatted amiably with people strolling in front of the "porticciolo".
For once, I am writing this blog not late at night after a day's work, but in bright daylight sitting in front of the computer in a garden overlooking the Ceresio lake. Not that I am looking for words, but it comes natural to glance around me in search of a good lead for such a tricky subject as Italy. And what do I see?
First of all, the tower of the church of St. George's, half a mile downhill, a well restored XVII century temple with a lovely balcony surrounding it, allowing a breathtaking view of the lake in what is supposed to be Europe's sunniest location. On the wall facing South, and Italy, the familiar outline of Italian patriot Carlo Cattaneo - actually his mortuary mask - is carved in marble, over an obituary written by his widow: "Here the bones rested of the man whom history will call the modern Socrates..." Milan finally managed to obtain the great federalist's remains from Castagnola (today part of Lugano) "which had provided the great man with republican hospitality".
Who knows how many times the great man had received friends visiting from Milan who asked him what he thought about the present state of Italy. I can just picture Cattaneo, who had been the protagonist of Milan's five days of anti-Hapsburg revolt in March 1848, shaking his imposing bald head in despair. Hadn't he renounced after all his seat as a senator in Turin - then the Kingdom's capital - and found refuge in Switzerland, as he had done when the Imperial agents were looking for him years before?
Sounds familiar? Ok, let's look further south, just across the lake, where a corner of the huge new structure of the Casino di Campione, just completed by the famous ticinese architect Botta, can be seen. There in Campione, the Italian enclave, an old Arab gentleman in impeccable suit was talking not much time ago about his supposed ties with islamic fundamentalists, sitting outside his villa. Wasn't he connected with terrostis operating in Italy, belonging to a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood rooted in the 30s and in the Third Reich? What were his ties with the Munich mosque, Germany's most ancient? What were his connections with Italy? The old gentleman kindly dismissed all these nasty suspicions, then decided to remove himself from Campione and his villa and vanish. Another Italian mistery?
Let us look west, then, where a road reaches Vico Morcote, to the right of the Melide bridge cutting the lake neatly in two.
There, in a suite of the Swiss Diamond Hotel on the lake's shore, Albanian businessman Behgjet Pacolli just had a talk with Spartaco De Bernardi of the "Corriere del Ticino" and explained his plans for a free Kosovo, where he was born in 1951, to be integrated in the European Union. Pacolli's company Mabetex, based in Ticino, enjoyed hefty contracts in Boris Eltsin's Russia and elsewhere (it now employs 10,000 workers). This and his international relations make Pacolli a credible contender for Kossovo's leadership, in the near future. He dismisses the idea, though."For the time being I am not going to move from Lugano - he told the journalist - I first have to find somebody to put in charge of my business here". His political movement is 100,000 strong, and Italy will certainly have something to do with Pacolli's plans, not least because Italian troops control one of the most sensitive areas of Kossovo, and will have a say in whatever happens to that region in the future.
Ambassador Lautenberg recently wrote an e-mail congratulating me for a letter I had sent to the "Financial Times" supporting Switzerland, Ticino and Lugano in particular. "What I liked most - he wrote - is that you actually identified with the Luganesi..." Well, no wonder: I had been answering to a letter by an Anglosaxon lady resident of Lugano (just across the lake from me) complaining about a number of things Swiss and about how dull Lugano is. Dull? What with all the international things going on around here - and I didn't mention the banks - and Italy at your doorstep.
Italy, looking so much more interesting when seen from a safe distance...