Eighty years of sweaty skin and socks in sandals

Italo Calvino, who cannot be suspected of alcoholism or anti-democratic tendencies, wrote the following in his most underrated novel, "La speculazione edilizia", which he first published in an issue of the magazine "Botteghe oscure" and later included in "I racconti dei Supercoralli" (Einaudi; it can now be found in the "Oscar" series by Mondadori, 184 pp., €13.50). “After the Second World War, democracy had arrived, that is to say, the whole population going to the seaside. (…) Parents, grandparents and parents-in-law basking in the midday sun on the seafront promenades, just as the consumptive Russian grand dukes and the lords had done forty years earlier. And at the time of year when, in days gone by, the ‘milords’ and grand duchesses would leave the Riviera and head for the shady resorts of Karlsbad and Spa for their spa treatments, the elderly were now being replaced in the seaside apartments by ladies with children, whilst for their extremely busy husbands, the drudgery of weekend trips began.”

It was 1957 and Italy, which had struggled to drive out the invaders from the north and had come to terms with the liberators from the south, was falling prey to the ‘clumsy and unsightly groups of Germans, English, Swiss, Dutch or Belgians on group holidays, women and men of varying degrees of ugliness, wearing knee-length breeches, socks in sandals or shoes on bare feet, floral-print dresses, underwear peeking out, pale and ruddy flesh, deaf to good taste and harmony even in their changing colours”. So it was inevitable to find oneself herded “into this civilised, self-fulfilling, adulterous, self-satisfied, cordial, philistine, familiar, well-behaved crowd, devouring ice cream, all in shorts and T-shirts—women, men, children and young people in absolute equality of age and gender—in this plump and superficial river flowing over the rugged Italian reality”. So if, this August, you find yourself grumbling about the clamour of tourists, the sweaty skin mere centimetres from your nose, the display of flabby bodies and unkempt hair whilst strolling along the high street, or the food stains or patches of vomit on the pavements, think twice before you complain: it is the fruit of democracy; indeed, the most significant achievement of eighty years of the Republic.