By Claudio Maria Ciacci
I followed with attention and, I admit, sometimes jumping from my chair like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, the interview in which the Mayor of Catanzaro, with the emphasis of an emperor at the end of a comic opera, celebrated himself. Three years of administration summed up in an apotheosis of grandiloquent words, colorful steps, ribbon cuttings, and promises inflated like festival balloons. It seemed more like a variety show monologue than a political report: “we did,” “we invested,” “we created”... always forgetting to specify who actually started those projects. A bit like if Nero had boasted of having built Rome, forgetting he first set it on fire. Catanzaro, a city once forged by wind and faith, crossroads of Norman civilization and spiritual bulwark of Calabria, today presents itself to the world with the swagger of a court jester. The Normans built fortresses, erected cathedrals, drafted laws. Today we draw colored stripes on the ground and call a parade with more bare skin than public dignity “culture.” In the same land that welcomed Roger of Hauteville, today people march between latex boots and wheelbarrows full of sequins, to the applause of the institutions and the embarrassed silence of the few left wondering what the hell is going on. And the Mayor? Present, indeed proactively enthusiastic. With the composure of a master of ceremonies of a modern cult, he has already embraced, ahead of time and out of touch with reality, the next “rainbow” event, scheduled for June 2026, as if it were the cultural event of the year, even before it takes place. Apparently, it is enough to announce it, to evoke it in conferences and self-congratulatory statements, to pass it off as the pinnacle of the city’s cultural programming. On the other hand, in the new symbolic order, even a glittery thong not yet worn can already be elevated to an existential metaphor. Ask some councilor seeking visibility. It’s a real shame that this is the same Catanzaro that, over the centuries, was known worldwide for its refined production of silk and velvet, fabrics that adorned papal palaces, French, Spanish, and even Eastern courts. A city that dressed kings and cardinals with the fruit of its artisans’ skilled labor, now reduced to a stage announced for parades that have only the word “cultural” in the press releases. Between one triumphant statement and another, the mayor even managed to slip in the “revitalization of the historic center,” as if it weren’t obvious to everyone that the heart of the city is now a cemetery of closed shutters, dark shop windows, and rusty signs. The shops that were once the pride of our Catanzaro are now just memories, ghosts of the commerce of a city that had a history, an identity, a vision. In this surreal scenario, the Cavatore, symbol of the man who breaks his back to build, has been transformed into a kitsch fair icon. Backlit in fuchsia, it looks more like a shopping mall installation than a tribute to effort and labor. He, the Cavatore, sculpted to remind us who we are, is now a backdrop for selfies, a cover for empty posts, hostage to the vacuous aesthetics of an era that hates substance and adores appearance. Meanwhile, schools are literally falling apart, but funds are nonchalantly shifted from the education budget to that of “entertainment.” Because what matters today is not forming consciences, but entertaining bodies. In a city where books are lacking, decibels abound. Where there are no labs for students, there are stages for drag queens. And heaven forbid you protest: burn the heretic, the “bigot,” the “intolerant.” But it would be enough to look. It would be enough to walk through the city’s streets, through neighborhoods that once thrived with people and markets, and are now abandoned to decay and dust. Young people leave, like disillusioned crusaders, heading north, abroad. And those who stay survive. Survive apathy, cultural misery, political carelessness disguised as innovation. Art, true art, has been replaced by discount entertainment. Beauty, which once elevated and united, now divides and confuses. And there are even those who dare to compare these circus shows to Botticelli’s Venus, Michelangelo’s David, the sacred nudes of classical art. It would be like comparing Saint Catherine of Siena to an influencer seeking clicks. But we live in crazy times, and the crazy, as we know, make more noise than the saints. And so, Catanzaro, once the capital of the thinking South, has now become the capital of a hysterical post-modernity. A fallen queen, badly made up, badly lit, even worse administered. A city trying to survive itself, while those who govern it celebrate themselves like a new Louis XIV among confetti and smoke bombs. But beauty, the kind that saves, is not found on the floats. It is in the silence of the cloisters, in the rigor of ancient stones, in the voice of the fathers who left us a civilization and not a stage. May God save us. Or at least, turn off the fuchsia backlighting.