In the Spin Time case, political sympathy carries more weight than ‘urban solidarity’

So, there are at least two ways of looking at the ‘Spin Time’ phenomenon: a community centre threatened with eviction following a fire a few days ago, the beating heart of bohemian and left-wing Rome in the Esquilino area – a squat, yes, but situated within the ZTL zone. There’s the view of Gualtieri and Zingaretti, for whom it is not “just a squatted building” – as you, a reader of Il Foglio, might think – but “a civic, social and cultural endeavour, a model worth defending”. Then there’s Roberto Saviano, who’s now on his fifth day of the sit-in, in forty degrees in the shade, and declares that “democracy is being defended here”, leaving a trail of signatures for the fateful appeal: Sorrentino, Bellocchio, Virzì, Mastandrea, Marinelli – you get the picture. Italian cinema bears this out: "Spin Time" belongs to us all, and we must all hold it dear (I repeat: all of us).

Then there’s Spin Time just as it is, without the ideological spin: namely, 21,000 square metres of the former INPDAP headquarters, a public building, squatted in 2013. Inside: a tavern with a kitchen, sponsored by Slow Food, hosting #caporalatofree community dinners; a craft brewery; an open bar where a cocktail costs five euros in a plastic cup – a bit pricey by squat standards. Then there’s a co-working space with 5G connectivity, rehearsal rooms for hire at 35 euros per afternoon, Bolivian dance workshops, a film club hosted by Sabina Guzzanti, and at the weekend, down in the basement, the nightclub: DJ sets that have become famous throughout the city, featuring international artists, alcohol at controlled prices, the bass rumbling until dawn in the heads of the residents – who perhaps ‘haven’t embraced the project’; too bad for them. In short, a commercial and cultural hub at no cost. No rent, no SCIA, no HACCP, no deluge of permits that, in Italy, would put even a multinational off opening a kiosk – plus the added bonus that here, whilst you’re finishing your Moscow Mule, you can even light up a cigarette, so much for ‘the law’.

Spin Time is the forbidden dream of every entrepreneur forced to grapple with our Soviet-style bureaucracy. So alongside inclusion and the ‘model of a city to be defended’, there is at least one other message that Spin Time promotes with equal intensity, particularly amongst the younger generation: in Italy, squatting is easier than running a business; it pays off more – if only in terms of ‘image’ – and if you do it with style, even Sorrentino will applaud you. In Italy, education in solidarity always goes hand in hand with a lack of education in entrepreneurship: either you’re part of the ‘struggle’ or you’re a business owner, a shopkeeper, a trader – and Sorrentino won’t even say hello to you.

Quick test: in Colleverde di Guidonia, on the outskirts of Rome, there was Casa d’Italia. A former squatted school, openly intended as housing for Italian families in crisis. Evicted in 2019, with eighteen families inside. Grassroots welfare, community, mutual aid – the same vocabulary as Spin Time, but ‘right-wing’. So no Saviano, no Zingaretti, no Sorrentino, no cardinal rushing over on his scooter to turn the power back on. Therefore, ‘not for everyone’ and hence no proposal from the council to buy it, as is now the case with Spin Time. If the issue were ‘urban solidarity’, something doesn’t add up. If legality were the yardstick, both would be outside the law. Except that the criterion is neither the law, nor housing, nor urban welfare: it is political affinity. Spin Time is popular as a project because it resembles those who defend and promote it. Then those who defend it explain that it must also appeal ‘to everyone’, Bolivian dance included. However, it also becomes very complicated to constantly call for the eviction of CasaPound or other self-managed right-wing groups whilst at the same time defending the Spin Time model. It’s the typical sleight of hand that, on the left, always appears clear, transparent and flawless, but which, outside the bubble, seems rather convoluted – a laborious attempt to grasp at straws. But this is precisely the kind of legality we ultimately prefer: the intermittent sort, the one that is then magically suspended when the illegal space appeals to us, is right, and reflects our beliefs – a bit like Schengen and Sánchez’s forced repatriations, which immediately become ‘an extraordinary security operation’.