walking forward
Good and little government
Liberties
of the Red Dukes' State
of Tuscany
in the year 2005
by Mauro
Vaiani, published in Pisa, March 15th 2005
thanks to
Maggie Jay for language revision, March 21st 2005
A Survey of the Red Dukes’ State of Tuscany in the year 2005
Tuscany, known as Etruria in ancient times and Tuscia in the middle ages, is a very attractive region in the center of the Italian Republic, in southern Europe.
Modern Tuscany is one of 21 autonomous regions of the Italian Republic. It is bordered to the east and south by Umbria, whose nature, history, economy and society are very similar to those of Tuscany, and Lazio, the region of Rome. To the west is the Mediterranean Sea and to the north are the Appennini Mountains, which separate Tuscany from northern Italy.
It covers roughly 22.000 sq km, more or less the size of Israel or Massachusetts. The population is three and a half million. The population density is about 150 per sq km, lower than the Italian average which is over 180. Only the Florentine urban area is crowded. Most other Tuscans live in villages and small to medium sizes cities.
Its 600 kilometers sea coast is largely unspoilt. A quarter of the territory is high mountain, where wildlife still survives, but human effort to protect against erosion and forest preservation has almost disappeared. The landscape is dominated by hills, two thirds of the territory, being deeply transformed and cultivated by many generations of rural activity. The medieval boroughs, ancient farm houses, castles and ruins testify to thousands of years of human activity, hard work and love for the land. Protection of this immense historical, artistic and natural heritage, is modest, compared with New England or Australia, even if it is greater than the rest of Southern Europe and other Mediterranean countries.
Tuscan agriculture is characterized by high quality products, notably olive oil, wine, flowers, and local food. Rural traditions, ancient handicrafts, local festivals and folk music are still alive and have recently been rediscovered, not only for the purposes of tourism, despite decades of undervaluation and sometimes even a sort of ideological contempt on the part of local political leaders.
The simple, sober and genuine Tuscan cuisine is, for every inhabitant or foreign visitor, an extraordinary experience, both pleasurable and healthy. It survives, despite the menaces coming incessantly from European, Italian and Tuscan bureaucracies, in family-based food shops, traditional taverns and countryside restaurants.
Tuscany is said to have prospered since before the Etruscan age, but the high point for this lasting cradle of human civilization was in the Middle Age. While the Roman-German Emperors and the Popes were contending for supremacy over the developing modern Europe, most of the cities established a measure of freedom for the individual and self-government for its communities. The most famous imperial delegate, Ugo of Tuscany, who died on December 21st 1001, became a legend for his moderate guardianship over the local communities which were self-developing. Sailors of Pisa, merchants of Prato and the bankers of Florence, were all protagonist at the very beginning of free enterprise and trade. The Comuni, free republican cities, of Tuscany progressed faster than other European towns of that time in wealth, artistic and intellectual achievements.
Tuscany became the heartland of the Renaissance. The popular Italian dialect of the Tuscans was transformed into an immortal international language by the powerful imaginations of Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio. An unbelievable number of artists came from its towns, from Cimabue and Giotto, to Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio, Botticelli, the of course the universal geniuses Leonardo and Michelangelo.
Every Tuscan town has in its museums, in churches, in public buildings or along the road, the important heritage of their work, together with that of generations of minor and unknown artists and artisans. The area attracts millions of scholars, students and visitors from all over the world and tourism would boom in both quantity and quality if it were not for complex legislation, high taxation, inefficiency of public transportation, and the wastage of public funds by a myriad of inefficient European, Italian, Tuscan, provincial and local promotion offices.
In the most elegant public building of civil Gothic architecture in Tuscany, the Palazzo Pubblico, built between 1297 and 1342 in Siena by the civic independent authorities, the famous cycle of allegorical frescoes, known as the “Effects of Buongoverno (Good Government) in Town and in the Country”, painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, is still conserved and admired. This is a visual manifesto of what used to be the political ideology of the Tuscan republican communities: commitment, both on a personal and a community level, to self-improvement, civic duty, and care of public property and resources.
Many of those who are amazed by such a concentration of talented people in a particular space and in a relatively short period, consider it to be due to this historically unique combination of spiritual and political individual liberty, respect for property, economic freedom, limitation of feudal and clerical abuses, and the election and rotation of governors. A mix well founded on the former Etruscan-Roman civilization, protected by the relative impotence of Emperors, Popes and other powers against local liberties, and helped by a little luck, which is always useful both in life and in history.
It’s widely accepted that the noble values of the western free economy, open society, public virtues, political moderation and democratic institutions, have deep roots in the sense of civic duty and the republican spirit of medieval Tuscans. The American Founding Fathers loved Toscana for its art and literature, but also for the libertarian legend of the Tuscan self-governing medieval city. Modern politics was conceived by intellectuals, like Machiavelli and Guicciardini, trained in its original institutions of liberty.
Even when this freedom was declining, due to the rise of the Great Dukes’ State, Tuscany could still generate a figure like Galileo Galilei and the noble family of the Bardi was able to give hospitality and patronage to the creators of modern opera.
Nevertheless, this rise of the Medici dynasty, whose members became the Great Dukes of Tuscany, Popes of Rome, prominent princes of Italy and Europe, had its origin in the individual efforts of its founders, who were self made men: poor and simple who had migrated from the Mugello Valley to Florence, looking for better jobs and a new life.
It is still questionable whether decadence and the fall of the medieval republics were more responsible for placing Tuscany outside the main stream of civilization than the commercial upheaval created by the European discovery of America, in 1492, when the epicenter of Western history moved towards the Atlantic ocean and Atlantic powers started rising.
Sir Robert Dallington, an Englishman who traveled throughout Tuscany, wrote “A Survey about the Great Dukes State of Tuscany, in the year of Our Lord 1596”, published in London in 1605, which created a diplomatic incident between England and Tuscany. The book was publicly burned and the author was menaced by detention.
The Survey is full of admiration for Tuscany’s natural resources and its historical heritage. Many parts affirm that the real fortune of Tuscany lay in the brave hearts of its people. You can read that every Tuscan was proud of his farm and deeply committed to taking care of his property, no matter how modest and poor it was. Each artisan was the owner of his own workshop. Monks and nuns worked hard to make their cloisters better. Nobles and merchants competed to make their palaces more magnificent.
The English gentleman led the modern reader to believe that an individual energy still survived in the Tuscan personality, indissolubly united with a strong spirit of irony, sarcasm and resistance to the abuse of power, but that the spirit of the country was declining under despotism. Dallington, traveling around Tuscany, noted that the people were extremely poor, bewailing their own miseries and expostulating the injuries suffered by the Florentine dictators.
Talking about Pisa, he remembered that it had been very populous in former times, but that after the city had been conquered by the Florentines, most of the ancient Pisani departed, preferring a voluntary banishment rather than a forced subjection.
The mainstream of western civilization was sweeping through Tuscany as well as other European countries: government was getting bigger; power was getting centralized; individuals and businesses were subject to increasing taxes and duties.
Under the despotic regime of the Dukes, taxation was scandalous compared that of England at that time, personal liberties were menaced, local communities were loosing their autonomy and wealth. The Tuscan attitude to self-improvement and positive competition was becoming more a dream than a reality, perhaps a pretence, or a vain self-glorification.
The Medici government, conscious of being unpopular, decided to win the favor of its people and thus the stability of the state. The ancient University of Pisa was financed and protected, to establish a tradition of intellectuals, maintained by the state and faithful to its power.
A brand new city, Leghorn, was built nearby, in a strategic place along the coast. A city invented in order to replace the port of Pisa, and developed by means of the extraordinary provision of low taxes and rights of asylum. The Leghorn Constitution of 1593 assured the inhabitants the most complete freedom of residence, enterprise, movement and cultural initiatives. Immunity was given to former prisoners and insolvent debtors who agreed to live and work there. Asylum was given to Moors driven out of Spain, Catholics escaping from England, Huguenots banished from France, Jews exiled from all these and many other countries. Leghorn flourished as a community of pioneers, that owed their gratitude and loyalty to the Florentine despot. The necessity for the State to manage social diversity, state-guided welfare, the awareness of being liberated by the Prince and not by themselves, remained as an authoritarian basis in this apparently tolerant and pluralistic community.
The ability of the Medici as state-builders was confirmed at the moment of their extinction. The last of their dynasty died without heirs in 1737. The European Powers sent the dynasty of Habsburg-Lorraine to Tuscany as its new rulers. The nation of Tuscany accepted them with few objections and substantial obedience. The new Dukes, better known by the Tuscan name of Lorena, rapidly encountered more favor than the Medici, for their moderated absolutism, their efforts to develop the country, and their paternalistic aims to reform and improve people's conditions. Under the influence of the Age of Enlightenment, Lorena forbade torture and, in 1785, Tuscany was the first state in the world to abolish the death penalty.
When the storm of the French Revolution hit Europe, Tuscany was conquered by Napoleone Bonaparte, who annexed the land to France, from 1801 to 1815. Bonaparte founded another university in Pisa, the famous Scuola Normale, whose name means normalized school, in the sense that pupils were expected to be nurtured as faithful future bureaucrats of the Napoleonic State. He did also immense damage to the commerce of Leghorn, changing it into a naval base for his project of a continental blockade against Great Britain.
By the Restoration, Lorena returned, but times were changing. Many people from all over the many States of the peninsula began to struggle for a united Italy. The Great Dukes’ State of Tuscany was conquered by the State of Piedmont and Sardinia in 1859, during the war of unification of the Italian peninsula into a wider, unified, centralized modern state, ruled by the Savoia dynasty. Lorena was peacefully but drastically expelled during one night. The passage between the Great Dukes’ State and the Italian unitary State was endorsed by a popular plebiscite on 12th March 1860.
For the first time in history, all Tuscan males at the age of 21 were given a vote. 95% (366.000) voted for annexation to Piedmont, enlarging the emerging Kingdom of Italy. The plebiscite results have been seldom discussed, but many, even critical contemporary observers, report that people came to vote following the new owner directives. Great landowners, rich merchants, nobles and intellectuals who were active in the Lorena establishment, such as Bettino Ricasoli, became enthusiastic statesmen in the new kingdom. Tuscans ministers, senators and representatives, who were expected to defend their own ancient identity and local self-government traditions, changed themselves into champions of centralism and fierce enemies of the new Italian state federal organization proposals.
Tuscany was rapidly changed into a peripheral province of the new modern state and was to be colonized by the XX century ideological movements. The first organized Italian Nationalist Party was founded in Florence in 1910. Italian nationalism gained particular favor in Tuscany, notably in Pisa and Leghorn, in the University and in the Duty Free Port of the ancient Great Dukes’ State. The lasting habit of obedience which the Medici had established throughout Tuscany, especially in Florence and in the two colonial cities of Pisa and Leghorn, probably helped in forming the new mass conformist movements. In 1914-1915 Tuscan politicians and intellectuals played a key role in lobbying for the Kingdom of Italy to enter the First World War, against the will of the Parliament and the majority of national public opinion.
After the tragedy of the Great War , Tuscany became one of the cradles of Fascism. Leghorn , Florence and all of Tuscany were called under Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship fascistissime, the most Fascist places.
At the end of World War II, the Yalta conference having decided that Italy should remain in the Western block, the Italian Communist Party accepted it with realism and moderation. The Party made a sincere choice for democracy. It accepted the sharing of power with other anti-fascist parties and participated in writing the new republican constitution of Italy. In Tuscany the local Communist Party was the main force of the antifascist Resistance. Its local leaders became mayors and administrators. They took power with the moral authority acquired during the Anti-Fascist Resistance and their post-war generation of leaders demonstrated responsibility and social sensibility. The black Fascist Tuscany became the Red Zone.
The Communist leadership became the new Red Dukes. It was the incarnation of Antonio Gramsci’s vision. The greatest Italian Communist intellectual and leader, elaborating the bitter realism of Machiavelli and the absolute amorality of Lenin in a more advanced dialectical synthesis, theorized that the Party would become the modern Prince. And the modern Prince came to Tuscany, to stay and to last.
From 1945 to 1990, about half of adult Tuscans voted regularly for the Italian Communist Party and many more for its political satellites. After the fall of the Berlin wall, the Communist Party was renamed the Democratic Party of the Left. Other changes of name and reorganization followed, the consensus remained. Today the strength and the power of the Dominant Party of Tuscany is continued in the Ulivo Center-Left Federation. The fact that this national coalition of former communists and their satellites, chose as their name the Italian word for the olive tree, an important symbol of Tuscan rural paradise, tells the reader a lot about the importance of the Red Dukes of Tuscany in the Italian and European left.
Everywhere in the world one can find dominant and catchall parties, which derive lasting power from faithful strongholds. Even in the Red Zones of Italy, Communist Party supporters have been rewarded with the spoil of the victory, such as public founded contracts, jobs and houses. The case of Tuscany was studied as the Democratic Machine of New York, or the Social-Democratic Party of Sweden, or the Labour Party in Israel. In the stability and rigidity of Cold War times, the lasting stronghold of a democratic party in the West was perhaps considered regressive, maybe even dangerous in the long term, but more or less natural as was the Single Party predominance in a totalitarian state.
In an age of disintegration and liberation coinciding with the end of the Cold War, things should be different. Not only in the communist republics of Eastern Europe, or nationalist and fascist states of Latin America, but also many other lasting party hegemonies have been discussed all over the World. In Italy the power of the post-war dominant parties broke down, under the 1992 popular protests against partitocrazia, the rule of parties, because of their avidity for black or legal funds, and the general corruption and malfunctioning of the State. Former Christian Democrats, or Socialist, or Liberal strongholds in Italy became places where new leaders and new parties started competing, with alternating success. Even in the former Italian Communist strongholds something changed, but it was not exactly a break down. Let’s consider two cases of Tuscan political history: Lucca and Leghorn.
Lucca was the last Tuscan city to be annexed to the Dukes’ State. The ancient republic was destroyed only in 1799 by the French revolutionary army. In 1805 Napoleon Bonaparte assigned the city to his sister, Elisa Bacciocchi. The state stayed out of the subsequent Napoleonic campaigns and political upsets. After his fall, it was entrusted in 1817 to Maria Luisa Borbone-Parma under Austrian tutelage. Her successors had to give up the Duchy to Tuscany in 1847. The Great Dukes’ State, which had been hated by Tuscans for many generations as it represented the end of freedom, was peacefully accepted by the city and its rural surroundings, but not without profound spiritual resistance. It’s not surprising in the political evolution that followed, that Lucca remained diffident to the last modern Prince of Tuscany. During the Cold War, Lucca remained a Christian Democrat stronghold, a white enclave in the Red Dukes’ State. After the fall of Italian partitocrazia, the city's population welcomed the liberation, and elections started to produce varied results and frequent changes of leadership.
Leghorn was in complete contrast being the ideal city founded by the Dukes, their favourite and beloved colony, a monument to their best policies: individual opportunities for everybody, but within absolute obedience to the Prince. Leghorn passed from obeying one Prince to another, without failing. It remained faithful and to the Medici, then Lorena, then Savoia, then the Nationalist and Socialist movements, then the National Fascist Party, and finally the Communist Party and its contemporary political heir, the Ulivo. The majority of people still vote for former-Communist or neo-Communist leaders. The leftist conformism is brutalizing everyday life. The hegemony of the modern Prince of Tuscany is intact. Political alternatives do not exist. The city is declining, but it rejects any innovation. The electorate is extraordinarily stable, at least by western contemporary standards. The satirical spirit of a population of sailors and merchants, is aimed directly against the political main opponent of the Prince, Silvio Berlusconi, the hated leader of the national Center-Right liberal and conservative coalition.
The charisma of Berlusconi, after his political debut in 1994 when he halted the ambitions of the Democratic Party of the Left to dominate the government of Italy, was also felt in Tuscany. With his original mix of libertarian appeal against big government and a little populism against the Leftist and Unionist bureaucracies, he woke up liberal and conservative Tuscan political minorities and, for a few years, one thought the Red Dukes’ State could be seriously challenged. However the enthusiasm declined very soon, for the reaction of the Tuscan Dominant Party and the effort it put in organizing a national reaction against Berlusconi, was important in assuring his following defeats at national level and maintaining Leftist local hegemony.
In the best Leninist tradition, the Italian Left, especially its Tuscan leaders and intellectuals, has been very able in accusing their political competitors of everything bad. When accusation follows accusation, no matter how realistic or believable, the competitor will be ultimately tarnished with suspicion. Diffidence and maybe hate will grow as automatic reflexes. The competitor will be forced onto the defensive and obliged to give endless explanations.
The Left accuses Berlusconi to construct a regime, omitting they have already established their one. In Tuscany, Leftist control over communications and culture is so deep and widespread, that it makes Berlusconi, the owner of half the Italian national television system, seeming an absolute beginner by comparison.
Political hegemony in the West and totalitarianism in the East, are not common subjects of research in Tuscany. In the universities these studies are rarely considered or financed. They are not politically correct and disturb the Dominant Party, most professors being members. Not surprising if one remembers the protectionism of the Medici, the fast conversion to Lorena or Savoia, or the mass adhesion to the National Fascist Party.
The universities of Pisa and Florence have recently been in the international media scene for the rude protests against visiting Israel diplomats. The bitter side of those events was not the violence of student extremist groups, but the incapacity of professors to react. As they belong to the Dominant Party, or they share the leftist conformism, many of them prefer understatement and silence. They don’t react against the extremism even if they believe anti-Israel extremism may be exaggerated and inappropriate, because they consider it contiguous to their intimate adhesion to the anti-Israel position of the Italian left.
In many civic forums of Tuscany, in some independent think tanks of a social-democratic, libertarian or neo-conservative inspiration, there is a growing awareness that the Red Dukes’ State of Tuscany is not only one of the decisive forces of reaction against Berlusconi, but unfortunately also a stronghold which guarantees a conservative and immobile Left an undesired and unnatural duration.
Giuliano Amato, Romano Prodi, Massimo D’Alema, former Center Left premiers and a number of others Ulivo political leaders, have lost, repeatedly, important political battles not only in Italy, but also in Europe, in the dramatic contemporary international scene. In an age of disintegration and growing impotency, inefficiency, and corruption of international organizations, they still talk about empowering the European Union or the United Nations. In a time of global terrorism, they still have anti-American reflexes. An outdated inefficient nomenklatura is still leading the Italian Center-Left and influencing the European Left, while leaders of new winning positions such as Blair or Clinton are completely ignored or only superficially considered.
Constituencies of Tuscany guarantee success in elections for regional, national or European parliaments to everybody the Party has chosen as a candidate, as easily as it was for Caligula to nominate his horse as a senator in Rome.
The constituency of Mugello Valley, has become the zimbello of national public opinion, which started to suspect that its population had suffered from a drastic fall in its intelligence quotient, since the time of Communist domination or even since the emigration of the Medici to Florence.
This land of bischeri, as fools are called in Tuscany, has been violated by an enormous public work project, the Bilancino dam, which is as ambitious as it would have been in ancient Egypt or in modern China. The population has been displaced, national roads have been rebuild, churchyards have been moved, to make room for an artificial lake of about 80 millions cubic meters, designed to protect Florence from terrible floods such as the one in 1966, or to provide drinking water for industrial and urban developments in Tuscany. Discussions and the never ending work has lasted for half a century. Every kind of opposition and skepticism has been silenced by the Dominant Party. 1 billion Euro were thrown into this water.
Many thought that this historical violence would be the tomb of these Dukes, symbolically in the same Mugello where the Dukes originated. Decades of rumours, flames, sit-ins, debates passed. Politicians and technicians have been challenged by local newspapers and also investigated by the law. Nothing has changed in the polls. Mugello is still voting massively for figures that are outsiders imposed by the Party, some of whom are absolutely alien to the Leftist tradition of the area, such as Antonio Di Pietro, the famous policeman-judge who played a key role in the 1992 Italian revolt against partitocrazia.
After their election, these visitors disappear and nobody in Mugello meets them again. At mid-term time, local Ulivo’s leaders solemnly promise next time they will pretend to choose local and more appropriate candidates. The next election comes, another visitor chosen by Party bosses in Rome or, even worse, in Brussels, arrives, wins the election and escapes…
In Tuscany, not too openly for they fear the Dominant Party reaction, many groups of Leftist and Social-democrats intellectuals are active, who have not voted for the Red Dukes at local and regional elections for years. It’s a pity they are statistically overwhelmed by thousands in Tuscany who do exactly the contrary. In national and European polls, they vote following their liberal minds or their conservative hearts. In local and regional elections they vote for the Red Dukes, who are still distributing jobs and houses, and spending public money to maintain the hegemony.
As the Red Dukes believed much more in themselves as heirs of Medici and Lorena, than in Russian real Communism, they survived the fall of Berlin wall. The void left by the fall of the Communist paradise in which they believed, has been filled by all sorts of new Leftist slogans: anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda, the legends of Third World countries liberation struggles, everything which is considered, by the international network of the Leftists orphans of a disbanded Soviet Union, to be politically correct.
For Toscana is a rich and developed country, deep ideological anti-Western reflexes exist in the context of the problems of an affluent society, strongly protected by public welfare. That’s why environmental catastrophe forecasts, junk science, hygiene hysterias, anti-tobacco, and anti-nuclear movements are welcome. The official web site of Tuscany (http://www.regione.toscana.it ) is worth a visit, to illustrate this point. Every new trend, if holistic, violently simplifying the problems, with a dogmatic and totalitarian approach, which can be reduced to easy slogans to memorize and obey, has found a home with the orphans of Communism.
Because they believed more in the success of the party and in providing privileges, without too much excess and ostentation, for their entire leading class rather than in the personal enrichment of single corrupted politicians, they survived the 1992 Italian revolt against partitocrazia. They were also helped by a lucky eventuality: most of the Italian judges who investigated and persecuted almost every Italian politician at that time, were former member or sympathisers of the Communist Party itself, or other Leftist movements.
Those who had been Communist or of similar beliefs, saw themselves as the custodians of absolute good. In some families of the local nomenklatura many generations have now passed, maintaining the power and the privileges of the founders of the Dynasty. The grandfather was a partisan and then a Communist senator. The son was mayor of an important city. Grandsons are university professors, public agencies’ directors, or are serving as rising leaders or intellectuals for the new Ulivo Federation. No doubt they deserve the heritage and the privilege. They are princes of perfect obedience: a religion for those who believe, power for those who fear, wealth for those who are for sale.
In this year of the Lord 2005 the Ulivo federation is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the hegemony of this last dynasty of the Dukes of Tuscany. They can celebrate with serendipity, for in recent local elections of 2003 and 2004, the Center-Left coalition led by the successor of the former Communist Party easily and often won more than the 50% of votes. With a little help from the 15% collected by the radical Leftist, most of whom are former Communist or neo-Communist, the hegemony is still strong and apparently unbreakable.
2005 is also the year of the 60th anniversary of Liberation from Nazi-Fascism. The first initiative of the regional authorities has been a seminar on non-American soldiers contributions to the Liberation war. Americans, Englishmen and even the French have been commemorated enough, in the past. On 13th January 2005, in Florence, there was a celebration of the Allies’ soldiers of many nationalities: from Algeria to Australia, from Brazil to Canada, from India to Morocco, from New Zealand to Senegal, from South Africa to Tunisia. Very politically correct. A small suspicion of yielding to anti-American dominating conformism, however, will remain.
Today, though many visitors, gazing solely on the beauty of little towns and the countryside, still think of Tuscany as a paradise, the region occupies an average or low position in all the European or Italian statistics which are important in terms of the quality of education, health, security, or even the chance to start a business or to find a good job. Neither excellence, nor shame. Nevertheless, the quality of life in Tuscany is not only a legend of tourism, or political propaganda by its Red Dukes. There are solid reasons, behind this consensus.
After World War II, Tuscany participated in the Italian economical boom and halted its flow of emigrants. It started to absorb immigrants, mainly from the poorer regions of Southern Italy, many of whom, with their pioneer spirit and desire for self-realization, revitalized for a while the Tuscan spirit, founding new firms and building a new well-being. These long term immigrants from Southern Italy, despite every stagnation, will never return to the levels of unemployment and criminality of their places of origin.
The presence of affluent immigrants from Northern Italy, Switzerland, Northern Europe, Great Britain, the United States of America and other rich countries is also statistically relevant. These privileged groups are coming to occupy leading positions in the fashion industry and tourist economy, in universities and other institutions, or, quite often, simply to retire to the countryside after having bought and restructured a rural house somewhere in Chianti, Maremma, Lunigiana, or some other fascinating rural area. Many of them are sincerely concerned about the evident lack of a social and economic future of their elective country, but they would have difficulty returning to the crowded and polluted urban areas of Europe or America they escaped from.
The presence of uneducated immigrants from poor regions of the world, who come here to take hard and underpaid jobs, is around 5% of the population. Much less than in other developed western countries, but enough to create social tensions, because there is no immigration policy which educates people to understand poor, uneducated, culturally and spiritually diverse immigrates. In the last decades Local authorities have provided an orgy of symposiums and workshops about solidarity with the immigrate and respect and mutual comprehension with the newcomer, but after all that waste of words and public funds, most of them are still coming illegally and the relationship between illegal immigration and the rise of criminality are constantly understated. No institution – with the exception of some charities – is teaching them the Italian language, educating them about the new laws under which they are now living, fighting their exploitation in an unfair and illegal economy. None of these serious problems, of course, can convince these new communities that Tuscany is not a paradise. Even if the economy, environment and social climate were much worse than they are, they would never return to their Third World hells.
Life can be hard for ordinary people, living in downtown Florence or Leghorn, because of energy black-outs, lack of tap water, inefficient rubbish collection, traffic, general urban decadence and the decline of schools and culture. However most Tuscans live outside of Florence or Leghorn, in boroughs or little towns. Perhaps the 287 local councils, along with an expensive and unreasonable plethora of many other territorial and functional institutions, are not providing enough security, health, energy, rubbish collection, culture and entertainments, but the ordinary Tuscan, even those growing old, the disabled, the sick, or the young unemployed, the poor, orphans or widows, is still protected by strong family links, local charities, cooperative associations, clubs, or the local church community.
Managing a little factory in Prato or Empoli industrial districts can make one anxious, because of bureaucracy, taxes, lack of infrastructures, high cost of personnel, China or India's unfair competition in manufacturing. Running a shop, a small hotel, or some other tourist activity in Viareggio or Tirrenia, which have been declining for decades in quality, suffering price increases, loosing visitors and a share of the tourism market year after year, can make one narrow. However all these problems are not undermining the sense of living decently, for Tuscans who live in declining areas are still protected by a minimum level of welfare and they can still sometimes rely on savings accumulated by their families in the past.
One can only dream of the economic freedom and opportunity that exist in the United States or Australia. One is not as rich as one could be in Holland or England. Hospitals are not as efficient as those of Lombardy. Streets are not so well kept as in Tirol. Schools are not Swiss colleges. Nevertheless the standards of civic duty, legality, public decency are higher than those you can find in Rome, Naples, Sicily, and perhaps most of Southern Europe.
The per capita yearly income is about 16.000 € (the European average is 14.500 €, the Italian average is 14.000 €). 72% of the one and a half million Tuscan families own their house and another 11% live in it without any expenses. Even if the minimum guaranteed monthly income to an aged person is only 500 €, almost a quarter of the entire population has a pension. The unemployment rate is at 5,3% ( the Italian average is 7,9%). The poverty rate is only 4,1% (the Italian average is 10,6%).
These are psychological, social and economical factors and facts which help contemporary Tuscans to believe that the Red Dukes’s regime is not that bad and keep the silent majority obedient.
Contemporary Tuscany is no more a land of excellence, but Tuscans think they can keep sleeping in the hands of its Red Morfeo, said Alessandro Antichi, the opposition leader we’ll come back to later in this survey.
Next April in Tuscany and other 13 Italian regions, there will be elections for the Governor and regional parliament. It will be an important test for the Center-Right national government, but in Italy, where a de-facto devolution has been taking place for decades, regional political affairs are becoming more important, year by year. In Tuscany, the fact is that in even in 2005, the successors of the local Communist Party are sure to win the elections as easily as in the past.
The incumbent Governor is Claudio Martini, former Communist mayor of Prato. He is an influential 54 year old politician, who has had a life-time career in the Communist Party. He presents himself as a moderate center-left leader. He is going to stand having refused any electoral tie with the neo-Communist and radical Left of Tuscany. His administration has done almost nothing about the bureaucracy and decline of Tuscany, but he spent a good deal of his last five-year mandate traveling around the world as if he was a foreign minister, or rather a supporter of every new-Global and no-Global movement. In his biography he presents himself, with a little of civetteria, as the first immigrant president of Tuscany, for he was indeed born in Tunisia. Claudio Martini is opposing recent Italian laws against illegal immigrations. He is criticizing the pro-Western moral protest of a Tuscan figure like Oriana Fallaci.
The next Governor will be elected by a single vote, in the English style, so the only surprise could derive from division among the Red Dukes’ of Tuscany. The radical and neo-Communist candidate is Luca Ciabatti, who is campaigning for peace throughout Tuscany, against the so-called American unilateralism and for the pulling out of Italian troops from Iraq. Another important candidate is Renzo Macelloni, the famous former mayor of a small but beautiful borough of Tuscany, Peccioli, well known for his good administration and commitment to concrete innovative issues, within the Leftist tradition of Tuscany. He was rejected by the Ulivo Federation, for he was not considered obedient enough. A minor candidate is Marzio Gozzoli, who stands for the Right radicals. He has no roots in Tuscany and had no role in the next election, but the small minorities of neo-Fascists of Tuscany, who share a great many of the leftist anti-Western prejudices, will be sure to vote for him instead of voting for the incumbent candidate.
The fifth and last, but not least, candidate is Alessandro Antichi, who is the main leader of the Center-Right opposition and has been for 8 years the mayor of Grosseto, the capital of Maremma. He is a 47 year old lawyer. When he became, in 1997, the first non-Leftist mayor of his city after fifty years of hegemony, he was an absolute innovation. He was also, as a liberal Catholic, with a libertarian soul, a white fly in the Italian political panorama. In 2001, he was confirmed as mayor with an increased majority, for he had been successful as an administrator, acting with humility and commitment. The city of Grosseto was a community in decline, ten years ago. Now it’s the only Tuscan community which is improving its economic results, and raising social and environmental better standards.
Alessandro Antichi, designated candidate by the liberal-conservative opposition, has gained the support of the local civic independent forum, Tuscan federalists and libertarian groups. Many Tuscans who are looking forward to the opportunity of a regime change are considering voting for him even though their personal history is rooted in the Left.
Some organized minorities, which are traditionally linked to the Left, having needed protection from European ambiguity and the Italian Right at a grass-root levels, are considering voting for Antichi. Jewish associations, masonry chapters, gay movements, who fear the Right for its historical connections with Fascism and have never voted for Catholic figures because of the unfair position taken by many bishops on social diversity and tolerance issues, are considering supporting this man. They admire his true liberalism, his adhesion to the European and American conservative tradition of inclusion, his competence, and his success in making Grosseto blossom. Minorities often feel the need of change before majorities. This time they sense the possibility of a change.
Gifted with a warm and attractive charisma, direct and honest, hard working, well educated, Alessandro Antichi is also rumoured to be lucky. He will need to be and his region too. Tuscany needs a little taste of the providence, to avoid decline. Otherwise it will keep sleeping and obeying its Red Dukes, and perpetuate the slow killing of the Tuscan spirit which began with the Medici. Let’s hope something new will happen, in this year of the Lord 2005, and have an ending different from the one of Dallington 400 hundreds year ago: Qui sub Medicis vivit, misere vivit. If Claudio Martini turns out to be the last successor of the Medici, the history of Tuscany will turn from its secular condition of high minds and low fortunes. We will return to our past and best, with the spirit of a brave nation, whose people cannot talk but with their hats on their heads, and with their hands by their sides, with actions as well as words, either suitable not at all, or at least a freer people then we have been under the Red Dukes.
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