Of SUNDAY MAZZA – It was the 70s. Calabria was preparing to wait for the fruits that would come from the institutionalization of the Region.
The aftermath of the Reggio uprisings had led the three Calabrian capitals to start a fratricidal battle, to contend for the benefits deriving from the birth of the institution. All this without even imagining that, 50 years later, one of the most deviant regionalisms in Italy would emerge.
And while Reggio and Catanzaro basically set the dispute on the plume (Council to the former, Giunta and all the fat bureaucracy to the latter), Cosenza was granted the largest state-owned company that Calabria had ever received: the University .
Of course, as a counterpart for Reggio, the birth of the fifth iron and steel center in Italy was imagined. However, as a reminder of what should have been Reggio’s industrial miracle, today there are still a few disused warehouses. Among other things, never used for the purpose except for some impromptu New Year’s Eve. A few years later, the fallback came from the idea of a Genoese to build – in an area designed for heavy industry – what would later become the largest transhipment port in the Mediterranean.
However, it was clear from the outset that the vision of this Region was based on three heads.
In the early 1990s, the birth of the two new provinces gemmated by Catanzaro was of little value. Although, at first, perhaps taken by euphoria (especially the people of Crotone), they thought they had won the lottery. However, they soon understood how much territorial breadth and demographic dimension represent the parameters influencing the quality of the services offered and political weight in the regional and extra-regional dimension.
On the merits, Vibo found itself the capital, thanks to the painstaking work of Senator Murmura. The Vibonese decentralization project, begun way back in 1968 with a bill, tripped up the more titled Lamezia. After all, Catanzaro would never have given up its branch logistics base to another company. In addition, in all likelihood, many, at the time, ignored that Cosenza politics played a predominant role in the match. In fact, when would the great opportunity to stab Catanzaro in the flank come again. Cosenza, therefore, did its utmost to oil the process of cutting off the Catanzaro area. And he did so by engaging in the generation of two small territories (VV and KR) inconsistent in themselves, but vital to deforming, by slimming down, the great centralist mother Province.
Then the process of de-nationalisation. Del Rio, Unions and Mergers of Municipalities. Again, the Vast Areas and the Metropolitan Cities (which are something very different from the Metropolitan Areas), therefore a substantial restoration of what was before ’92. Therefore, while leaving the small Provinces, these were transformed, apart from the insignia, into empty boxes. Ergo, a substantial restoration: maintenance of the small Provinces, but with centralization of services on a vast basis (at least 350,000 inhabitants and 2500km² per area).
In recent months, not surprisingly, the union managements and the chambers of commerce have been reunited by Vaste Areas: CS, CZ, RC. Operation, among other things, already tested with hospitals. Insane perimeters which, in the Calabrian case, did not take into account the affinities and contiguous relationships between areas subjected to assembly.
However, history has taught us that political geography is changeable. It is subject to dynamism. And it can happen that even a flattened and twisted land like Calabria can change, upsetting crystallized territorial distortions. And so it can happen that two impalpable cities of the Ionian Arch, born Corigliano and Rossano, have decided to merge to give life to something more concrete than the simplistic concept of demographic sum of the previous urban nuclei. Something that was not a harbinger of interest for Sibaritide alone, but that also invited the neighboring Crotone area to improve. A wonderful opportunity to open up, together, to the coastal contexts of Basilicata and Puglia, imagining paths of interregional metropolitan amalgam. Not already improbable or unthinkable, but concrete. Empirical and factual.
This is what politics, civil society and the ruling class of the Community should have clear. This is the spirit with which we should approach the merger of Corigliano-Rossano.
And energy should be spent to change the reckless three-headed vision of this region. Perhaps imagining a fourth that takes into account, in its territorial and demographic definition, what was stated in parentheses in the previous paragraph. Not to add bureaucracy or further centralism, but to rebalance a territory that is variegated and profoundly different in its areas. Amalgamating areas for common interests and on a polycentric statutory basis.
The merger between Corigliano and Rossano (hardened restorers aside) has shown that two or more centers can coexist within the same city. Likewise, two or more capital cities can coexist in the same Vast Area, as the Italian geographical mapping teaches.
So, if you really want to revive the debate on the merger between Corigliano and Rossano, as well as all the similar processes taking place in this Region, do it with a vision and looking beyond the horizon. Let intelligences be mobilized and think big. Design a leading role for the City and, together with Crotone, assign it the coordination and management of the entire Ionian Arc of northeastern Calabria. Work imagining in the medium and long term an emancipatory condition to be extended to something that goes beyond the cities, beyond the ambits and beyond the macro-territories. Otherwise, melancholy and stale feelings will always hover in the souls of the nostalgic for scarves and plumes. With the concrete risk of transforming debates of a high political caliber into arguments for stadiums and racetracks. (dm)
[Domenico Mazza è del Comitato Magna Graecia]
