When Marx wasn’t living in the attics of historic centers and above all he wasn’t riding around on electric scooters
Controversy has been raging in Italy, as usual, for centuries, we could say Bridge yes Bridge no.
A controversy that is more ideological than anything else because scientific and technological data demonstrate its feasibility and sustainability.
Yesterday was a day of celebration Easter. Little news, some surreal. Like a cloud of Saharan sand that occupied Italy. Something that recalls a story by Calvino, even if there it was a strange foam.
But in the meantime, in times of social media, politics goes ahead anyway and a video appeared on Salvini’s profile entitled “Forward with the Italians’ Bridge, the best response to the NO party”.
“A few years ago there weren’t these billion-dollar investments, so the Bridge would have been an extraordinary but not decisive work, now not having the Bridge would be economically, environmentally, infrastructurally masochistic, because while you’re spending sixty billion euros to get there faster car, train, from Palermo to Catania, to Messina and from Salerno to Reggio Calabria, stopping for those 3 km of sea would be absurd so it is not the Bridge between Messina and Villa San Giovanni, is a European corridor between Palermo, Reggio, Rome, Milan, Berlin, Helsinki. The data that is also coming out from third parties, the last one I read yesterday was that of Open Economics, when you talk about 37,000 direct permanent jobs and an increase in GDP of around 20 billion distributed throughout the entire national territory, in short You’re talking about something momentous. I think it could be for Italy what the Autostrada del Sole was after the Second World War, that is, a development accelerator, especially in territories not particularly affected by infrastructural development in recent decades”.
After all, the idea of Ponte it is not – as people think – the prerogative of the right, on the contrary.
“The others say nonsense, we will intervene on roads, motorways, airports. And the Bridge will be the icing on the cake. Indeed, there is also an auspicious date for the inauguration of the Bridge over the Strait of Messina: 2 June 2012, a symbolic date for Republic Day”.
Guess who said these words? Berlusconi? Salvini? no. They were pronounced on April 26, 2001 by an unsuspecting person Francesco Rutelli during a packed conference held at the Messina Fair. The coalition was that of the Ulivo and Rutelli even indicated a detailed timetable from 2011 to 2012 with the laying of the first stone scheduled for 2005.
And then again:
“The Bridge will not be a cathedral in the desert but a positive symbol of Italy as it grows longer. Furthermore, local maritime pollution will be reduced, the process of coastal erosion will be limited, the impact of rubber vehicles will be reduced, there will be 15 thousand jobs, tourism will be relaunched and the entire area will be redeveloped”.
Then no one said anything, on the contrary.
Before him it was Bettino Craxi in 1985, secretary of the Socialist Party who even signed a convention to build the Bridge: “It will be completed by 1994.”
In that same year, as reported by the website ilsicilia.it, the same Romano Prodi who was then president of IRI declared: “Construction work will begin as soon as possible.”
The then Minister of Public Works, Claudio Signorilewent into detail: “In 1988 we will see the laying of the first stone and in ’96 the end of the works”.
Of course, there was still a non-ideological left, which believed in progress and development. The fundamentalist Greens and the No-Alls had not yet arisen or at least were not structured. The left thought about workers and work and Marx did not live in the attics of historic centers and above all he did not ride around on electric scooters.
In more recent times, in 2006-2008, the then Minister of Infrastructure Antonio Di Pietro he fought for the Bridge but had to give in to the No Tutto, who had already begun their work of freezing Italy.