Out and about in Italy

Having visited the Aeolian islands (they’re just off the north-eastern tip of Sicily) I can attest that this is one of the most extraordinary corners of the country. We’re talking active volcanoes and fumaroles, black sands, hot mud baths (a bit like Iceland I imagine, though I think the food’s probably better. This is Italy’s volcanic belt (Etna, Vesuvius, Vulcano et al) and the news that Stromboli is active again draws eyes back to the little island. Two new fissures have opened up, pouring lava into the sea. If you do visit Sicily try to detour to the islands - they’re something else.

Italy is slowly, inexorably slipping behind its neighbours. Its economy has been underperforming the EU since the mid-1990s. It has become less competitive than Tunisia. And, in two to four years, Italians are expected to be overtaken by the Spanish in terms of GDP per head. If you do not attach much importance to economic growth, you can consult almost any other measure of progress, from the use of alternative energy to the rate of female employment. Italy will almost certainly be found near the bottom of a table of comparable nations. According to Transparency International, only Greece registers a higher level of perceived corruption among the states of the “old” 15-member EU.

If as London’s Daily Telegraph reports, Italy is in turmoil, then arguably it has been for the last half century. A political system based on proportional representation has given rise to an increasingly fragmented and polarised party system, and fragile coalitions where factions as much as fully fledged parties can bring down governments. Decades of Italian politics have seen governments come and go in months, while nothing much changes and nothing gets done. Romano Prodi’s attempt to push through unpopular though necessary structural and economic reforms has given his enemies on the right (though within his coalition) the opening they needed.

For more see Martin Kettle in London’s Guardian, and there’s some excellent background on Italian politics from The Economist.

The Italian rugby union team may be a cause for some derision. Shades of the Jamaican bobsleigh team … or the British Davis Cup team come to that. Their election to the front rank of European rugby nations in 2000, as the Five Nations became the Six, and the Italians became regular whipping boys for the other countries (with some very honourable exceptions) has also occasioned some grumbling. The argument is, of course, that the ‘big’ countries don’t get proper practice against lowly opposition. Just as with cricket Tests against Bangladesh, a rugby fixture against Italy is sometimes seen as a waste of valuable match practice - scant preparation for facing South Africa, Australia or the All Blacks.

But the Italians have more of a rugby pedigree than they’re given credit for. And if it hadn’t been for the curious intervention of Benito Mussolini, they might be more of a power today. Rugby had been introduced in the early 1900s although it never enjoyed the popularity of soccer. Il Duce, leader of Italy from 1922-43, detested football whether it be rugby or soccer, because of their English associations, so he attempted to suppress them and pushed a game called Volata (supposedly based on forms of football played in classical times, such as harpastum, and therefore indigenous to Italy). It never caught on of course, and the new code was abandoned in 1933. The fledgling sport, which didn’t have the stronger league structure of soccer, never recovered.

Italy in the Six Nations from the Guardian