I’m  beginning to think these elections were used to vent anger about Italy not making it into World Cup 2018

It was an odd feeling that followed the results of the Italian elections this year from my own perspective as a semi-invested foreigner living here. There was an atmosphere that lingered around the city as if something had just happened that everyone would rather forget. There was an elephant in the piazza if you like.

The traditional party of the Emilia Romagna region, the Partito Democratico, had been  humiliated with its worst result ever. The centre-left coalition, of which the PD was the major constituent, had lost its slight majority and just barely achieved over 20% of the vote. The Movimento 5 Stelle had won – and yet with less than a third of the vote and no coalition partners, it hadn’t. The right-wing coalition had won in terms of vote share with Salvini’s anti-immigration party La Lega becoming the biggest party in a coalition normally under Berlusconi’s control. And yet, they hadn’t won either.

In the eyes of most of my friends and others, Salvini was a dangerous and negative force in Italian politics, who represented the Italian wing of the growing nativist nationalism that was spreading across Europe. But because of the electoral outcome where no government has yet been formed, this was no Trump moment, no one seemed stupefied or taken aback by the electoral victory of an “Italians First” ideology. Many were angry, some bewildered by little curiosities like the fact that so many people in the south had voted for a candidate who once said that northern Italians had “nothing in common” with them, leader of a party who used to refer to southerners as “parasites” and “layabouts” in public rallies.

Matteo Renzi and the PD’s imminent demise didn’t come as a huge shock to anyone except for foreign media it seems. And foreign media coverage, or at least English language media coverage, I found quite lazy and ignorant. The Guardian’s analysis exemplified that, calling La Lega a ‘new populist party’ despite being arguably the oldest party in the Italian parliament, indicating parliamentary euroscepticism was a new phenomenon in Italian politics, and calling the small social democratic political coalition Free and Equal an alliance of the “radical left”. Others were happy to commit the same reporting errors made during the Brexit campaign by blaming the PD’s downfall entirely on immigration, ignoring a plethora of other important factors, and neglecting to mention most of the PD’s lost votes went to the Movimento 5 Stelle and not any of the hard-right parties. That said, almost every major party has called for tighter immigration controls and increased deportations. To many on the ground the disillusion of the PD’s former supporters seemed to come more from the PD’s continued transformation into a Matteo Renzi Party, its betrayal of left-wing values, and its exemplification of Italian politics-as-usual. Indeed for those further to the left the only positive to come out of this year’s elections was the resignation of Renzi himself (just this week there was a ‘PD Funeral Party’ held in the political science faculty here), although we will see how long his absence lasts.

For me the most surprising result was the increasing irrelevance of ‘Il Cavaliere’ Silvio Berlusconi. His name was plastered across all the election posters for the right-wing coalition despite a ban on holding public office, and yet after the results showed Salvini’s Lega outperforming Silvio’s Forza Italia, for the first time in memory I was reading analyses of the elections without barely a mention of the man who had dominated politics since the birth of the “Second Republic” in the 1990s, not to mention foreign headlines on Italian politics.

Here in Bologna, the run-up to election was a period of relative calm. In this huge university town, at the centre of what remains of Italy’s ‘Red Zone’ with numerous left wing organisations, political groups and agitators, it came as a surprise to see Salvini visiting the city unopposed. Just two years ago Salvini did the same and parts of the city erupted, with clashes just down the road from me on Stalingrad Bridge. This time there were over 200 riot police in the town but not a single protest. Perhaps this is because La Lega is no longer the boogeyman of right-wing politics, indeed being the biggest force in right-wing politics they are now the mainstream. Something much more malicious has taken its place as the left’s most hated enemy – unapologetic neofascist movements such as Casapound and Forza Nuova, which did attract some trouble when they attempted to hold a rally in the city centre.

These days you’re more likely to see banners reading “Italy First” than a hammer and sickle

With no realistic left wing  capable of tackling La Lega’s rise in a country which saw the most powerful Communist Party this side of the Iron Curtain, and Movimento 5 Stelle putting forward the only alternative, a party which seems to be against a lot of policies but in favour of very few,  it’s hardly surprising that the strongest sentiment I have sensed before and after the elections is one of apathy or even despair. Friends and colleagues weren’t too enthusiastic about travelling home to vote in their constituencies for lack of good candidates, when asked who to vote for I would get a shrug more often than an answer, people including myself were confused about how to vote due to new voting rules which guarantee a mixed proportional and majoritarian system for two chambers which share the exact same powers, and those who were enthusiastic about a specific political party were largely voting for candidates who didn’t have a chance of reaching the threshold required to make it into parliament like the pro-European liberal ‘More Europe’ group or the far-left Power to the People.

From here who knows where it will end, but with the likes of Salvini or the Movimento 5 Stelle in the driving seat, it doesn’t look good, especially if you’ve just arrived from an inflatable raft in the Mediterranean. Unlike me, I can just grab a Ryanair flight home to a country where politics makes sense… ha.

A gentle reminder. Hopefully I will be flying home this May to change a corner of this map from red to, well, orange, maybe.

I wrote this piece for The Irish Times regular space for Irish readers abroad to present their current home to newcomers. It was published in print for the weekend Irish Times on the 2nd December 2017, and is accessible on the Irish Times page online here.

For space it was edited down a little so I have reproduced the online article in full here.

‘Ma and Me’ in Piazza Santo Stefano

Where is the first place you always bring people when they visit Bologna?

Piazza Maggiore and the Two Towers. The biggest tourist attractions in Bologna introduce the city quite well. The main church on Piazza Maggiore is beautiful but half finished, while the Two Towers that symbolise the city are striking but look ready to topple at any moment. Here you realise that Bologna is not competing with the likes of Rome for sightseeing. It’s much better than that, filled with a young and vibrant population, Bologna is a living and breathing city that hasn’t succumbed to that museum feeling of Florence or Venice. You don’t come here for selfies, you come here to eat.

The top three things to do there that don’t cost money are…

Picnic in the Giardini Margherita – On a sunny day in Bologna’s main park you will often happen across groups of jugglers and tightrope walkers practising their routines by the banks of the artificial lake that is now home to a few terrapin families.

Làbas – one of Italy’s many anarchic co-operative movements, Làbas organises political meetings and housing for the homeless, but also hosts organic markets and free concerts every Wednesday. [Note: Labàs’ original home has since been closed by the police, but they are in the process of re-establishing themselves with the help of the locals and even the local council]

Enjoy an espresso under Bologna’s colonnades. Most of the footpaths in Bologna’s centro storico are covered with red and orange colonnades which provide cover come rain or shine – an idea I wish I could introduce to Ireland. Ok, you have to pay for the coffee, but you’re really here to watch the locals go about their day, and the excellent coffee will cost you little more than €1.

Where do you recommend for a great meal that gives a sense of Bologna?

Trattoria Leonida. I don’t think I’ve seen this one in the guide books, but I have brought all of my guests here following my first visit. They serve the best Lasagne alla Bolognese I have ever had, made with about 10 subtle layers of fresh spinach pasta. The playful staff keeps me coming back too.

Where is the best place to get a sense of Bologna’s place in history?

The Archiginnasio. Founded in 1088, the University of Bologna is the oldest university in the world in continuous use. The beautiful Archiginnasio building used to be the centre of this world of knowledge which then provided the blueprints for our very concept of Western education.

What should visitors save room in their suitcase for after a visit to Bologna?

Pignoletto sparkling wine. Bologna’s sparkling wine doesn’t seem to have made it big outside of the Emilia-Romagna region never mind abroad, but in my opinion it outshines Prosecco by a long shot, and will rarely cost you more than a few Euros a bottle.

Leaving my adopted home in June after a month of post-exams holidays , I was glad that I had chosen a two-year Master’s degree. Sure, the student life is an easy one, but it was more than just that. I had made so many new friends and acquaintances, I had learned so much, and my Italian had improved ten-fold (although my housemates may disagree, sick of my making them repeat everything twice). I was glad to have the opportunity to broaden that experience, now that Bologna had become my second home I was ready to move on from being a tourist in her midst. And in June she is such a beautiful place to call home.

Bologna transforms into another creature in summer. In April she sheds her spring coat as the poplars of hidden courtyards release pollen into the air in a snowstorm of little fluffballs, as impossible to catch in your hands as their unexpected beauty is to put into words. In May comes blooming jasmine with its unusual smell of both oncoming summers and Chinese food, as the heat creeps up on you threateningly in a house without the luxury of air conditioning.

Piazza Verdi, the centre of Bolo’s extracurricular activities

Every piazza turns into an outdoor cinema, every inch of park a music festival or marketplace, an ecological festival, a political festival, and no where are any of them effectively advertised, so each festival comes as a surprise. Those who have lived in Bologna before become indispensable fonts of local knowledge. Outdoor music at the Cavaticcio, cinema in Piazza Maggiore, the usual concerts in Làbas make the city in June a cultural gem. One day after falling asleep in the park, I woke up to find myself in the middle of an impromptu circus, as Bologna’s amateur clowns and acrobats constructed a tightrope circle all around me. A friend warned me I would never be seen again and for thirty seconds I fantasied about dropping all this International Relations nonsense for life as a travelling clown. Not a million miles away from a political career I supposed.

June was for falling in love with Bologna all over again. My arrival in September, the onset of winter in November, and now June were exhibitions of three different cities all in the same packaging of porticoes and vermilion architecture.

The exams this time around had a familiarity to them (especially considering I had to resit one of them), but I was determined not to give in to the flexibility of the Italian examination system which lets you sit exams in whatever month you like. I had resolved to get all my exams done and dusted by June to give me time to take in Bologna’s summer before I fled the heat of July and August. And some heat it was, after weeks in the mid 30s and final acceptance that there was no escape from constant sweatiness, us northern Europeans danced through a rare monsoon rain one night laughing like demented idiots as the rest of our group ran from shade to shelter.

Midnight at the oasis

A clawing feeling of FOMO had me worried two months in Dublin would be too long, especially as all of my beautiful Italy-based friends were spending their holidays at equally beautiful Italian seaside towns, some travelling the Balkans while others took in the Mediterranean sun on further shores. I needn’t have worried, it’s now mid-August and I have barely stood still while the clock keeps ticking towards another academic year. Weeks on the boat on the Shannon in rain and shine as well as countless nights in cosy snugs in old Dublin pubs have kept me more than busy. Lock-ins in the country and music sessions in the closest of friends’ houses are making the idea of leaving for another year as difficult as possible, never mind the prospect of the upcoming Fleadh Cheoil down in Ennis.

Not quite Amalfi, but it’s family and it’s home.

In the end there’s just no comparing life between countries as different as Ireland and Italy, even if you’re reminded of their uncanny similarities on a weekly basis. I complain as much about Italy’s bureaucratic holdups as much as I sing paeans to its unrivalled food culture (I’m twitching for lack of good coffee). Likewise I despair about Ireland’s political culture as much as I cherish its sick sense of humour over creamy pints.

This month, news from Bologna started to creep back into my peripheral vision, that our favourite Wednesday stomping ground was shut down by riot police. Làbas is a kind of left-wing commune, established five years ago by activists in an abandoned military barracks, and they had transformed it into a centre providing a homeless shelter, language lessons for migrants, organic markets and midweek concerts. As I began to get sucked back into the current affairs of my adopted hometown, emails came through from the University, and the reality of classes and thesis research returned to relevance. It was time to get back into battle.

I recently received an email from The Irish Times asking for the opinion of Irish abroad on the recent result of the Citizen’s Assembly on the issue of abortion and the status of the unborn in the Irish Constitution. I thought I might also put my thoughts on paper here. 

Should the current government cease kicking the 8th Amendment can down the road, I will most certainly fly home to vote.

Like many Irish people, I was moved in 2015 at seeing the #TakeTheBoatToVote crowd come home in their droves to vote in a huge majority for gay marriage, and I hope to see similar for a referendum on abortion.

Living and studying in Italy, I often have to explain the issue of the 8th Amendment to friends and colleagues. People are unaware that a woman risks 14 years in prison for an illegal abortion, some students from the UK are unaware that their fellow citizens in Northern Ireland face even tougher penalties. It shocks my friends here who may live at the very epicentre of Roman Catholicism and yet are not subjected to the levels of undue influence that the Church enjoys at home. Abortion is still debated here and there is the continuing issue of objecting doctors (over which the UN Human Rights Committee recently expressed concern), however it is an issue which isn’t just exported to neighbouring countries as we do at home.

The Marriage Bar, and prohibitions on contraception and divorce are all things I am too young to have experienced, but which all form a backwards picture of my country that I feel reflects unfairly on the real citizens of Ireland and on their ambitious visions for the island. It upsets and angers me, because I have always thought that the greatest aspect of our country is not our institutions or our laws, but rather despite them, it is the persistence of our people to overcome the mistakes of our past, to fly by those nets of nationality, language and religion.

I was opposed to the idea of the Citizen’s Assembly at its conception. We already have one, a quite expensive one at that, on Kildare Street. Their refusal to make a grown-up decision on this divisive issue is astounding. It is not as if we are the first country to debate the topic and come to a reasonable conclusion, in fact we are among the last in the western world. Nonetheless, the Assembly has been well informed by more experts than we might expect our representatives to consult in Buswells or the Dáil bar, and now their decision must go to referendum.

I expect the campaign to be difficult, divisive and emotive. While I felt most opposition to the issue of gay marriage came from religious groups and institutions, it would be unfair of us to say the pro-life campaign is motivated only by faith and scripture. The issue of abortion concerns our very concept of life itself, as well as our concept of the rights of women to bodily autonomy. It is an ethical, a moral, and indeed for some a religious issue.

Removing this issue from the rigid dogma of the constitution to the slow-moving but ultimately democratic channels of power in the Oireachtas is not the ultimate victory that progressives are looking for in Ireland, but it is most certainly a step in the right direction.