The Italians

by John Hooper

  For truly untrammeled “gray power,” however, nothing compares with the universities. A study published as Monti and his ministers were settling in behind their highly polished desks found that the average age of Italy’s professors was sixty-three and that many were still clinging to their positions and the vast patronage they were afforded when they were well over seventy. Their average age was the highest anywhere in the industrialized world.

  The importance of this cannot be overstated. It means that young Italians are not just imbibing the theories and attitudes of the previous generation, which is natural, but of the one before that, and in extreme cases even the one before that. The appointment of two younger prime ministers, Enrico Letta in 2013 and Matteo Renzi in 2014, has led to a rejuvenation at the highest levels of government. Renzi became Italy’s youngest ever prime minister at the age of just thirty-nine. And he set about naming a cabinet that included a party colleague who was only thirty-three at the time of her appointment. But it remained to be seen whether the process would extend to other areas of Italian life, and particularly higher education. The role played by the elderly in the formation of Italy’s future elite continued to represent a formidable obstacle to innovation, modernization and the rethinking of established ideas.

  This may have some link to the enthusiasm with which so many young Italians embrace the culture of their parents. Perhaps the most striking example of this is to be found in the area of rock music: currently the ages of three of the most popular singers are fifty-two, fifty-six and sixty. Aging rock stars have kept going in other countries—the Rolling Stones, for instance. But whereas Stones fans are in the main men and women of more or less their own generation, drawn to their concerts by memories of their youth, those of Italian stars like Vasco Rossi are often still in their twenties, if not their teens.

  The importance in contemporary Italy of older people and their ideas may be light-years away from the images radiated through the media, of careering sports cars and models stalking down Milan catwalks in the outrageously over-the-top outfits of designers like Donatella Versace and Roberto Cavalli. But then so is a high level of risk aversion.

  Traditionally, the dream of Italian parents has been to fix up their sons (and, later, daughters) with a nice, safe, undemanding job, preferably in the public administration, from which it was virtually impossible to be sacked. The verb used for “fix up” in this sense was sistemare, which was the same word used to mean “marry off.” By the early 2000s, there was evidence to suggest that the children were no longer content to be herded in this way into a job that lacked excitement, challenges and—in many cases—prospects. In 2001, the international employment agency Adecco carried out an extensive survey of Italian workers and found that the most favored career choice was self-employment. Entering the public administration was barely more popular than becoming a road sweeper or a factory worker. Ten years later, however, when the firm commissioned another poll after a period of prolonged economic stagnation, the picture had changed radically: the single most popular calling was that of state employee.

  Until the years of weak growth punctuated by recession began to take their toll, Italians had one of the developed world’s highest rates of household savings. It was consistently double or more the rate in Britain and often several times the level in the United States. The only comparably enthusiastic savers in a major Western economy were the Germans, who, perhaps not coincidentally, live in the middle of Europe and have a similar history of acute vulnerability to foreign invasion.

  Where Italians put their savings was also telling. Traditionally, they have preferred the safety of bonds to the potentially higher returns and risks associated with shares. For a long time this was put down to the favorable risk-return ratio on Italian government bonds. Because of the ever present danger of devaluation before Italy entered the euro, the state had to offer high rates of interest to attract foreign investors. But for Italians, who were largely insulated from the effects of devaluation—their lire would continue to be worth the same in Italy—the high yields on government bonds made them a bargain. Even more attractive to the members of Italy’s huge middle class was the short-dated, zero-coupon bond known as a BOT (Buono Ordinario del Tesoro). BOTs do not offer interest payments: the return comes in the form of a final repayment higher than the cost of the bond. But the difference between the final repayment and the cost price nevertheless reflects prevailing interest rates. The millions of Italians who tucked them away in their portfolios came to be known humorously as the “BOT people.”

  Even after Italy adopted the euro and interest rates fell sharply, the preference for less volatile, fixed-interest securities remained. Ten years later, bonds accounted for a fifth of all household financial assets. In the United States, the proportion was less than a tenth, and in Britain it was under 2 percent.3

  Italians’ appetite for financial assets of all kinds pales in comparison with their investment in land and houses. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in 2008 they had eighteen times as much invested in real estate as they did in securities of all kinds. In America the ratio was only two to one. One reason for this is that families have clung on to properties in the countryside they left when they moved to the cities in the years of the economic miracle. Another is that parents often buy flats or houses to give to their children when they marry and hold them off the market until they are needed. In some cases Italians just buy property as an investment and do not even bother to rent it out, believing that prices will inevitably go up and that the profit they make in the end will compensate them for any loss of income in the meantime.

  All these factors have had the effect of boosting the number of empty dwellings. In 2011, there were almost five million empty units scattered across Italy—17 percent of the total housing stock. In Britain the same year the figure was barely 3 percent. This huge and continuous withdrawing of real estate from the market has helped to keep prices high and rising, thus confirming for Italians their belief that property is the best possible investment. But after more than a decade of economic stagnation, with some families urgently needing to raise cash, the housing market began to weaken and there was a risk that the apparently virtuous circle just described could reverse.

  Just as risk aversion is characteristic of Italians’ approach to investment, it can also be discerned in their approach to football. Wary prudence has long been the hallmark of Italian soccer. The traditional form of play began to develop in the 1930s, when the then national coach, Vittorio Pozzo, led Italy to two successive World Cup wins, in 1934 and 1938. His strategy leaned heavily on a robust—and at times ruthless—defense. But it was not until after the Second World War that Italian coaches embraced the style of play that was to typify Italian football for decades: catenaccio. The word itself means “bolt” or “padlock,” an appropriate term for the deployment of a virtually impenetrable defense, the aim of which was to prevent losing at all costs.* Though Italian teams are still capable of playing boring, highly defensive football, catenaccio as such has faded from the scene and in recent years the way in which soccer is played in Italy has become more adventurous.

  That is not the only sign that Italians may be casting aside their customary caution. At the election that preceded Enrico Letta’s appointment as prime minister in 2013, most of the established parties put forward younger candidates. But the election also saw the eruption into parliament of the Five-Star Movement (M5S), led by the comedian Beppe Grillo. The average age of its deputies and senators was the same as that of Letta’s youngest minister. Overall, the average age of Italy’s lawmakers dropped from fifty-six in the previous parliament to forty-eight.

  Recent years have also seen the Italians shoot into the ranks of the world’s most enthusiastic gamblers—a clear sign of increased readiness to assume risk. By 2010, according to figures compiled by Global Betting and Gaming Consultants (GBGC), Italy’s gross gambli
ng yield (the amount staked less the amount paid out in winnings) was almost $21 billion. That represented annual losses of $345 for each man, woman and child in the country. Excluding the mostly small countries that are specific gambling destinations—places like Macao and the Netherlands’ Antilles—Italians’ per capita spending was the fifth highest in the world, behind that of the Australians, Canadians, Japanese and Finns. Their average losses were significantly more than those of the Spanish, who have traditionally been Southern Europe’s most ardent gamblers. Spokespeople for the Italian gambling business claimed it had become Italy’s third-biggest industry.

  The origins of this abrupt transformation go back to the mid-1990s. Until then, Italians had a narrow choice. They could have a flutter on the lottery, bet on the outcome of football matches and horse races or—if they could get to them—try their luck on the green baize tables of Italy’s handful of casinos. The oldest—it claims indeed to be the oldest in the world—is the Casinò di Venezia, which was founded in 1638 and moved to its current premises in Ca’ Vendramin Calergi after the Second World War. The branch of the casinò* on the Lido came into existence in 1938. Other casinos were—and are—to be found at Sanremo on the Riviera, Saint-Vincent in the Valle d’Aosta and at Campione d’Italia, a tiny “exclave” of Italian territory within the Swiss canton of Ticino.

  In addition, there was an illegal gambling sector that included neighborhood raffles and other, less innocent outlets for the wagering instinct. Spanish governments had long realized that the easiest way to get their citizens to pay their taxes was by encouraging them to gamble and taking a share of the profits. Italian politicians were slow to draw this lesson—or, perhaps because of the strong religious influence in politics until the early 1990s, they were reluctant to do so. The explosive growth of gambling since the Christian Democrats’ grip on the nation eased suggests that the illegal segment of the market was bigger than anyone imagined. To some extent, then, Italy’s gambling boom has been a matter of the regulated segment of the market growing at the expense of the unregulated one.

  The first step in this direction came with the legalization of scratch card lotteries in 1994. Three years later, Sisal, a private company with a gambling concession from the state, introduced what was to become a hugely popular lottery, the SuperEnalotto. Its chief attraction is that every so often it showers a vast jackpot on the player who succeeds in picking the six winning numbers. As the weeks pass without a winning combination, the jackpot grows, tempting more and more people to try their luck. Such is the appeal of SuperEnalotto that it draws coachloads of punters from neighboring France and Switzerland. In 2009, an unidentified ticket holder in Tuscany won €140 million after eighty-six draws that had failed to produce a winner.

  By then, gambling fever had really taken hold in Italy. Over the previous five years, the industry’s turnover had soared by 73 percent. In the same period, the world gambling market expanded by only about 10 percent. What made this increase all the more remarkable was that more and more Italian euros were disappearing into slot machines (the single biggest gambling medium) and being staked in other ways at a time when the economy was pretty much at a standstill. This raises the intriguing question of whether Italians’ newfound enthusiasm for gambling really does reflect an increased appetite for risk. There are some indications that this is the case. Many Italians, and particularly younger ones, have become fascinated by the game of poker. Its popularity was given a huge boost by the legalization of online games of skill in 2008 and, subsequently, by the launch of a satellite channel devoted entirely to poker. But it can also be argued that the gambling boom is a perverse outcome of the extraordinarily long standstill in the Italian economy, which began at the beginning of the decade and was still eroding Italians’ living standards long after the end. For people unable to find the cash to pay their bills or meet their regular mortgage payments, lotteries in particular hold out a hope, however faint, that all of their problems could be solved by a huge win.

  One thing is clear, though. The rapid growth in the social acceptance and official encouragement of gambling are symptomatic of an erosion of the power, though still considerable, of an institution that, down the troubled centuries, has been for Italians perhaps the greatest of all refuges and consolations: the Roman Catholic Church.

  CHAPTER 9

  Holy Orders

  Molti italiani, pur modestamente credenti, ritengono il cattolicesimo un patrimonio nazionale irrinunciabile: La Chiesa, da parte sua, ha assorbito virtù e vizi degli italiani, in un condizionamento reciproco che ha fatto della religione una caratteristica subculturale, più che un’adesione di fede.

  Many Italians, even those who are not particularly religious, regard Catholicism as an indispensable national asset. The Church, for its part, has absorbed the virtues and vices of the Italians in a process of reciprocal conditioning that has made religion a subcultural characteristic rather than a bond of faith.

  Giordano Bruno Guerri

  From the moment white smoke gushes from the chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel to the proclamation of a new pope from the balcony of Saint Peter’s, something like an hour elapses—an awkward pause during which the crowd in the great square in front of the basilica is in a state of keen expectation. When Pope Francis was elected in 2013, it was raining. So those waiting to hear who would be the new spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion baptized Catholics were even more in need of distraction. What better, then, than some music?

  After a few minutes the Vatican’s band—still known as the “Band of the Pontifical State”—duly marched onto the square, its musicians resplendent in gray-blue capes with yellow linings. A detachment of Swiss Guards followed, bearing pikes.

  So far, so unexceptional.

  But then a new band came strutting through the columns that encircle the square: that of Italy’s semi-militarized Carabinieri police force. Hard on its heels, five honor guards drawn from the Italian army, navy, air force, Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza. By the time they had all lined up opposite the Swiss Guards on the broad concourse in front of Saint Peter’s, almost two hundred Italian soldiers and gendarmes—more than half of them armed—were standing to attention in a foreign state. The Vatican band played the Italian national anthem. The Carabinieri played the pontifical anthem. The commanders from each side saluted one another. And then the senior Italian officer swapped places with the commander of the Swiss Guards. Both officers raised their swords and cried, “Viva il Papa!,” drawing the same cry from the troops ranged in front of them.

  Italian TV commentators explained to viewers that the Italian armed forces were paying homage to the new pope in his role as head of state, as stipulated by the Lateran Pacts, the agreements that finally reconciled the Roman Catholic Church to a unified Italy in 1929. But if the aim of the ceremony had been to leave the onlookers in the square baffled as to where the dividing line ran between the Vatican and the Italian state, it could not have been better staged.

  Foreigners from more secular nations were similarly perplexed by the reaction to a case taken to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg by one Soile Lautsi, an atheist and an Italian of Finnish origin. She argued that the display of crucifixes in school classrooms violated her right to give her children an education free of religious influence. Laws, which like the Lateran Pacts date from the Fascist era, specify that every classroom in Italy must have a crucifix hanging on the wall. Ms. Lautsi’s suit was contested by the Italian government, whose representatives argued that the crucifixes were symbols of national identity. The education minister at the time, Mariastella Gelmini, summed up the government’s case when she said that the symbols “do not mean adherence to Catholicism.” When the court sided with Ms. Lautsi, there was outrage. A poll conducted at the time suggested 84 percent of Italians were in favor of the crucifixes, which are also widely displayed in law courts, police stations and other public buildings. Two years late
r, the court’s decision was overturned on appeal. More than a dozen countries, including Poland and several Orthodox states, had by that time joined Italy in contesting it. The appeal court, known as the Grand Chamber, found no evidence that the display of the symbol on classroom walls “might have an influence on pupils.”

  The frequently blurred distinction between Italy on the one hand and the Vatican and the Church on the other reflects a historical fact: that, until very recently, not only was Christianity Italy’s only religion, but Catholicism was for all intents and purposes the only way of practicing it. The assumptions that fact fostered persist in the most unlikely quarters. When, shortly after standing down as Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair converted to Catholicism, the center-left newspaper La Repubblica greeted the news on its Web site with a story under the headline “Blair Becomes a Christian.”

  The Islamic community in southern Italy was virtually obliterated at the start of the fourteenth century. Emperor Frederick II* had deported most of his Muslim subjects to the Italian mainland. Their biggest settlement was at Lucera in modern-day Puglia. In 1300, the French ruler of the Kingdom of Naples, Charles II, attacked the town. Some fled to Albania. But most of the Muslim inhabitants of Lucera were either slaughtered or sold into slavery.

  That left only the Jews as representatives of another faith. Sizable numbers had lived in pre-Christian Rome, having arrived as traders or slaves. The Jews of the peninsula fared relatively well in the early Middle Ages, those on Sicily outstandingly well under the Normans. But at the end of the twelfth century Pope Innocent III ushered in a period of intermittent oppression that reached a peak of intensity during the Counter-Reformation.