Taranto’s ‘comeback’: Ilva out, the Games in

“Taranto is more than just Ilva.” The first to say this during the Rai 2 live broadcast dedicated to the opening ceremony of the Mediterranean Games – officially opened by President Mattarella – was Albano. The singer from Cellino delivered an embarrassing performance, and one might well ask whether Italy really has no better artists to represent it at an international ceremony broadcast across the Mediterranean. And since performance fees are no secret, neither is the amount the government (via the organising committee) paid him to botch a lip-sync. But Albano is a friend and charity partner of Massimo Ferrarese, the Games’ commissioner appointed by Raffaele Fitto. And since, by now, no decision is made in Taranto without Ferrarese’s input, the commissioner – the centre-right’s next candidate, a sort of Mediterranean Bertolaso – imposed Albano for the ceremony. Alongside two other Apulian artists: Mietta and Serena Brancale. But for the Milan Olympics they called in Mariah Carey, not Cochi and Renato! This alone is enough to understand the provincial mindset with which these Games were approached. So much so that it sparked an absurd row because, for the gala dinner, they called in the Milanese chef Berton, who prepared vitello tonnato, rather than a chef from Puglia to serve orecchiette and cime di rapa. It all began in 2019 when the then Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, flanked by Barbara Lezzi and Michele Emiliano, proposed Taranto as the only city in the world to bid to host the 2026 Mediterranean Games: this event was meant to be the city’s redemption. But from what? For years, Taranto was the most important and wealthiest city in southern Italy. This came about when the government chose it to provide the south with the country’s fourth steelworks, in order to lift it up to the level of the north. It was from this that Walter Tobagi coined the term ‘metalmezzadri’: the farmers who had taken permanent jobs at Italsider and, once their shift was over, returned to the countryside. But alongside them, the very best professionals, engineers and managers from all over Italy came to Taranto to work in the steel industry. And alongside the industry, trade, culture and the economy flourished. Yet years of populism and degrowth ideology have altered this narrative, portraying industry as an evil from which to free oneself, and transforming development into decay, and workers into those on unemployment benefit.

This narrative has been taken up by the Meloni government which, having definitively and irrevocably completed the destruction of the steel industry, has fallen in line with the ‘redemption’ narrative. And so the 350 million investment in the Games (to which must be added the government sponsors Eni, Terna, Snam, Trenitalia and Rai – who came on board after the Prime Minister’s attendance was announced), whilst far from the multi-billion investment made by the Renzi government’s CIS, served as a sort of consolation prize for the ‘tormented’ city, arriving precisely at the decisive moment of the industrial dispute. This is why Prime Minister Meloni, on holiday just a few kilometres from Taranto, decided to attend the ceremony, accompanied by several ministers (the two in charge of the Ilva dossier – ‘Made in Italy’ and ‘Labour’ – were absent). Not before ensuring that the trade unions would not protest against her. It is remarkable that those who now take to the streets every Friday to sound the alarm about fascism, upon the announcement of the ‘social bombshell’ in Taranto – involving twenty thousand redundancies – welcomed the government officials with jubilation, sitting alongside them in the reserved seats at the Iacovone Stadium, rather than seizing the opportunity to protest live on television. Instead, it was the ‘No Ilva’ groups who did so, booing both Prime Minister Meloni and the mayor of Taranto, Piero Bitetti (CS). And here too, it is surreal that the ‘No Ilva’ protesters are targeting the very person who shut the plant down. In any case, during the live television broadcast, hosted by the Meloni-supporting and Taranto-born RAI director Angelo Mellone, the boos were ignored. Even he, a long-standing champion of the steel industry, has now abandoned the ‘epic of steel’ to embrace (EMBRACE the future, the motto of the Games), like an Albano without his Borsalino hat, the ‘redemption’ of a Taranto rising once more, much like the Ikkos athlete depicted in the ceremony. At present, there are no figures on the ‘200,000 tourists’ announced by the committee’s director, Carlo Molfetta (a neighbour and friend of Giorgia Meloni’s Burraco). All the accommodation in the city has been reserved for staff, yet there are still B&Bs available on Booking.com. From this perspective, it will be interesting to see whether the organising committee discloses the total revenue, and how many visitors actually arrived in the city who were not part of the organisation. This applies in the long term as well, particularly with regard to the new jobs created. Whilst we know that the Olympics ran up a deficit of 320 million with 80 million less revenue than forecast, how much will the Summer Games’ deficit amount to? We would not want ‘redemption’ to mean shifting from a monoculture of steel to a monoculture of tennis, only to meet the same fate as Ilva: a company that survives solely on state aid. And now, not even that.