Italy Has a Rocky Road Ahead
She's going to have to change. But is she capable of it?
Of all my less savory personality traits (hardheadedness, workaholic, compulsive use of F-bombs, general snarkiness), the one I hate the most is my kneejerk and purely involuntary empathy. You may think this is a humble-brag, but it is not. Only recently have I tried to come to terms with the fact that I am incapable of shielding myself from the pain of others, including the collective sorrow of a world gone mad.
Climate change should be our first priority; it is not. Instead, we have a war on Ukraine, a U.S. Republican Party that has made it abundantly clear that winning by any means, even the overthrow of democracy itself, is acceptable; tech titans like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and dozens of others whose mindless pursuit of ego-projects (the metaverse, worthless rockets that do not advance science, self-driving vehicles, which twenty years later we are no closer to realizing) has left trillions of dollars wasted and a trail of human detritus behind them; the likelihood that Artificial Intelligence will put millions of people out of work; and an artistic culture that is in complete stagnation and has been replaced, like everything else, by the Internet.
Italy rates high on my list of reasons for insomnia worries. I love this country. No, I am not blind to her faults. If we applied purity tests to the things and people we love, we’d love no one. And the fact that I love Italy doesn’t mean I love my own country any less. You don’t divvy up the human heart one piece at a time, leaving an empty space. It’s not pie.
But my darling Italy is having a miserable time right now. The last thing the fragile world economy needs is a another European sovereign debt crisis, but that’s exactly where Italy is headed. This is, after all, a country that’s half the size of Texas with twice the population, and now its $3 trillion sovereign-debt market is the world’s third largest after Japan and the U.S.
That’s an alarming amount of debt.
Wages are barely higher than they were in 1999, and yet Italy’s public debt-to-gross-domestic-product radio is at 150%, the highest in this country’s history and the second highest in the European Union. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and spiteful gas pipeline shutoffs could potentially throw millions of Italians out of work.
Gas prices have risen 93% in the last two years, and this winter, they are expected to go up another 59%. Estimates are the average Italian household will spend €1,322 on electricity bills alone in 2022 (not including gas), compared to €632 last year. In Venice, many of the Murano glass blowers are closing their operations. Here in Umbria, store and restaurant hours are becoming ever shorter in an effort to save money on electricity. Just yesterday, I saw a refrigerator being wheeled out of a store on a handcart. The proprietor got rid of it because keeping an extra refrigerator now cost him too much money.
Italy was also the hardest-hit country in the European Union in terms of Covid-19 fatalities. A low estimate puts the body count at 177,650. In addition to the loneliness, depression, grief, and anxiety suffered by most Italians (who, unlike we Americans, are naturally sociable), there was an 8.9% decline in the country’s GDP in 2020—far worse than predicted—and billions more were lost due to an abrupt halt in tourism. I will never forget those dark days when the overflow of bodies forced Italian authorities to stash them in basements, crypts, and churches. The entire country spent two months, one week, and two days in lockdown. Gone was the mad rush of morning commuters. Weeds sprouted between cracks in the sidewalks. And yet now, two years later, I feel as though Italy’s once carefree spirit is gone.
Historically, Italian politics tend to grow evermore frenetic and volatile during such periods. I believe that is what we’re seeing now with the recent election of Giorgia Meloni, the first rightwing neofascist since World War II. When wages can no longer keep up with crippling financial demands, Italians often set down their espressos and take up political banners instead. Ordinarily, this would be a good thing, but the country has an unfortunate propensity for rallying around the wrong people. Mussolini, for instance. And Hitler.
But it is early days yet. Of greater concern is the economy of a country where tourism is only half-jokingly called “Italy’s oil.” In pre-pandemic years, tourism comprised 13% of its GDP. What it really does is put a Band-Aid on a hemorrhagic wound. Italy’s population is ageing. Her birthrate has flatlined. Her young people are fleeing to other countries within the European Union to find work. In an effort to infuse the country with quick cash, the previous administration attempted to do what countries like Portugal are doing: lure in Italy lovers with the promise of a digital nomad visa, which would permit non-Italians to reside in Italy, pay taxes, buy goods, and staunch the economic bleeding.
Italy is on track to lose a fifth of its population within the next fifty years—possibly sooner. For any country, this kind of decrease spells disaster. But that doesn’t mean Italy is keen to make up that loss with non-Italians. Oddly, I understand this. Italy should be mostly comprised of Italians. They’re what make Italy the singular place that it is: complex, fascinating, nonsensical, astonishing. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
But I find myself wondering what’s going to happen to Italy’s idyllic little villages when the older generations die out. A recent estimate puts them at 2,500, all at risk of becoming ghost-towns. There is a movement afoot to “revive” these places that younger Italians have no desire to live in by offering fixer-upper houses for a euro (rarely is this a good deal for foreigners, a case I argue here.) And yet that, too, is eventually doomed to fail. Without a visa to stay longer than a few months at a time, non-EU citizens who buy these houses only live in them a week here, a month there. Most of the year, those houses sit empty—and the money their owners would have spent at local businesses is now going somewhere else.
To be clear, I am not criticizing people who do this. I do the same thing, albeit in a different way. Most of them don’t have a choice. Italy won’t allow people, even property owners, to stay in the country longer than 90 days at a time (if they’re not EU citizens). This is creating a huge problem (and a missed opportunity) for Italy; moreover, these villages are still devoid of people since no one vacations at the same time. During the winter months, they become “dead cities,” with barely any Italians, which means no coffee bars, restaurants, or services.
Letting people fix up a one-euro house isn’t going to save the economy. Even so, given the fact that by Italian law, all foreign drivers must take a driving test and written exam in Italian, no exceptions, within their first year of residence, I predict mayhem. And this is even supposing the digital nomad visa becomes available, which it likely won’t.
Hard as it is to accept, Italians don’t really want foreigners here. What they want is their country back. But how likely is that to happen when Italy is so dependent upon tourism, when one contentious, mismanaged administration after another goes through Parliament? Italy clings to its glorious past, but this is 2022. We’re in a “change or die” situation right now. And it’s only getting worse.
I started this Cappuccino by talking about my worst qualities. But sometimes bad qualities can masquerade as good ones. I’m hardheaded, it is true, but flipped around, hardheadedness is persistence. That’s what Italy has more of than just about any other country I know: she’s persistent. Geographically, although not as a unified country, Italy has been around for over two thousand years. Chances are she will find a way to survive this maelstrom.
But she’s going to have to change. And if she changes, will she still be Italy?
Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin
What are your thoughts? You know I love it when you share them! Feel free to chime in below.
And yet, they’re part of us, and we’re part of them. I will never forget doing a “Festa de Castangna e Tartufo” in this little village where our Italian friends had a ski cabin and the tent they had celebrating the 500k Italians who left Napoli and went to the USA - celebrating leaving and yet, still Italiniani - I think it is why they feel a certain kinship with us and vice versa. ❤️
Oh boy. Talk about a sense of powerlessness. Here's the thing: the alien eye sees things the native eye cannot. It's one of the reasons why so many Italians who emigrated to the New World became fantastic successes. Those of us who have become immigrants in Italy (a different mindset than "expat") can see huge opportunities that go unexploited by Italian citizens. It is NOT inexplicable.
The success of Italians in places like the US, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and elsewhere was a multi-generational accomplishment. Those of us who are immigrants to Italy from say, the US and Canada, are cut of a different cloth than those very poor Italians who made their way through Ellis Island and Halifax. We are not "forced' by poverty to scramble for a living by taking on the kind of work that the Italian emigrants did or to build our lives from scratch.
We observe with impatience and we criticize, even if with muted voices. But, we do not really invest time, money or energy into the kind of enterprises that might burgeon into economically meaningful activities. Nor do we network, even among ourselves, for those purposes.
So there is that. But there are, as you have pointed out, so many obstacles in our way, that even if we were of a mind to make those investments, the Italian "system" would raise so many obstacles that we would be frustrated in our efforts from the get go.
There is the crux of the matter:.