Who is Cateno De Luca, that Meloni is ‘bringing’ with her?

Rome. A certain “Scateno” effect – named after and reflecting the temperament of Cateno De Luca, mayor of Taormina, former mayor of Messina and leader of Sud chiama Nord – could be felt, according to Sicilian observers, ever since De Luca, now a new ally of Giorgia Meloni (but with a free hand in Renato Schifani’s Sicily), used to roam around his native Fiumedinisi, in lands steeped in history where the ghosts of the founding Greek colonists and the sovereigns of the Kingdom of Sicily linger, harbouring a persistent desire to become a Member of Parliament. Viewed from today’s perspective, De Luca is offering himself as a gift to Meloni, calling her a ‘superheroine’, but only after having led the centre-left to believe, in previous years – not least given his good relations with former M5S members (the former Five Star Movement member Laura Castelli is president of Sud chiama Nord and deputy mayor of Messina) – that he might become another ‘patchwork piece’ to be thrown into the cauldron of the third or fourth pillar. Instead, Cateno is now awaiting the party’s National Assembly at the end of October to take a further step towards Meloni, under the watchful eyes of observers from the other political bloc who (see former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi) predict he could bring Meloni even more than the 1.5 per cent that De Luca currently stands at. De Luca himself repeatedly states, “We’ll reach 3 per cent”, especially as two MPs are ready to act as facilitators to spare him the enormous task of collecting signatures for the former Melonellum initiative. He has described his position as a ‘Barber of Seville’-style situation (along the lines of ‘everyone wants a piece of the action’), given the possibility that his contribution could help reach the famous 42 per cent – and in the face of Roberto Vannacci. The fact is that things now seem to be going very much his way, and despite his fickle nature, the fifty-four-year-old Cateno-Scateno from Fiumedinisi—son of a bricklayer and a farmer, a young activist in the Christian Democrats of yesteryear with a political career built from the ground up (in the sense of the path: from the neighbourhood to the town council to Parliament), as well as a social media star with scathing weekly live streams, modelled on those posted online by the Democratic Party mayor of Salerno and former governor of Campania, Vincenzo De Luca (so much so that, at one point in 2023, Cateno explicitly declared his communicative partnership with the Campania-based De Luca, proclaiming that ‘two De Lucas are better than one’). Already nicknamed ‘Masaniello’ at the time of his clash with the then Minister of the Interior, Luciana Lamorgese (who reported him for contempt following the accusation of alleged ‘state cover-up’ regarding the halt to landings in Sicily), During the pandemic, as mayor of Messina, De Luca gained notoriety for his overprotective ordinances (he required that every arrival on the island via the Strait be registered two days in advance, prompting intervention by the Council of State). A law graduate, but with a rustic, dialect-inflected way of speaking (his ‘io rusto a casa’ – ‘I’m a country bumpkin at home’ – uttered during Easter Monday barbecues under Covid restrictions, was hugely famous in Sicily), Cateno De Luca, elected to the town council of his home town at the age of eighteen, joined the Sicilian Regional Assembly (Ars) in 2006 and from there, via the founding of the Sicilia Vera movement, his pledge to become a ‘revolution’ in the truest sense, and the 2024 European elections (which he tackled by extending invitations to all the forces of the former Third Pole), has reached a point where he is now a husband, father and politician announcing a presence ‘in all constituencies’ in 2027, in alliance with Meloni and with a ‘new project that will take ScN as its reference point’ (‘any resemblance to the Iv-Casa Riformista model is purely coincidental’, jokes a Renzi supporter). Meanwhile, De Luca is fuelling the hopes of those impatient with the current legislature reaching the end of its natural term by evoking, on RaiRadio1’s ‘Un giorno da Pecora’, a ‘bipartisan séance’ from which the election date is said to have emerged: 9–10 May. A centre-right source commented yesterday: “A séance or a meeting held without the knowledge of Forza Italia and the League?” – namely the parties which, in Sicily, would never want to see their national “ally” Cateno as a regional opponent.