L’Aquila is a ghost city. It has been like that for the last 11 months, since the earthquake of business deal, of night-time laughter from the speculators, of the houses of sand, of the cardboard hospital, of the students killed by carelessness. L’Aquila is a piece of glass shattered into a thousand pieces and never put back together. The city has disappeared, far away from indiscreet eyes, in its place, condominiums have gone up in the suburbs, all the same.
Houses are not only “habitation units”, a place to sleep, a roof over your head. Houses are memory, history, affection, community, the fabric of civil life. The people of L’Aquila have been dispersed for almost a year in tents, hotels, and big buildings with no heart. Only 15,000 are in the new suburbs celebrated by Bertolaso and by Berlusconi. The other 45,000 are waiting for something, for an event of destiny, for a sign of the existence of the State. yellow and white helmets and big work gloves entered their city. They found the security forces and the police there to welcome them, having arrived from Rome for the occasion. The gates that prevented access were torn down by the people. The anti-riot troops, for once, didn’t intervene. They didn’t have the heart to beat up earthquake victims visiting their own city turned into a cemetery. The people of L’Aquila came in with wheelbarrows and they took away a part of the rubble in the streets, no one had done that before them.
The witnesses interviewed by the blog are denouncing dozens and dozens of unauthorised subcontractors, a clear wish right from the start to construct new homes and to neglect the reconstruction of the old city, an emergency-style policy that removes any choice from the community of Abruzzo. There was the first earthquake with houses of sand, structures without any anti-seismic protection. There was a long-lasting earthquake in which the tremors, ever stronger, were felt for months without any evacuation plan by the Civil Protection and with the denunciation of Giuliani, who had forecast it. There has been an after-the-earthquake with Berlusconi’s march-pasts and the top brass of the Civil Protection in a grand parade. An “after” that would make the great condors of the Andes blanche, and their sniggers of joy for the contracts about to arrive.
L’Aquila is the portrait of Italy. The regime’s TV News programmes describe it as an example of efficiency, when instead, behind the mask, it’s just abuse and good-for-nothing-ness.

PS. The election tour in support of the 5 Star MoVement continues. Today, Tuesday 9 March at 5:30 pm I’ll be in Torremaggiore (FG) and at 9 pm in Andria (BA). Thursday 11 March at 6:45 pm I’ll be in Vicenza with David Borrelli and the young people of the 5 star regional civic list.