“Calabria is like a shop full of any speciality, but with the shutters closed”. In one sentence Santo Strati summarizes the love and frustration for a region that has everything to be an economic, cultural and tourist power, yet does not make the task of those who want to make it grow easy. However, he remains an optimist: in 2017, when he retired after a long career as a journalist, he founded the web newspaper ‘Calabria Live’, “which has over 300 thousand contacts a day and reaches wherever there is a Calabrian community”, he explains in an interview with Adnkronos. “In Rome there are 600 thousand Calabrians registered (in reality there are many more), in Lombardy one million, in the world six million. A ‘diaspora’ that, if it were better at networking, could transform our region.”
Reading his newspaper, and in particular the Sunday newspaper (48 pages of in-depth analysis), there is no lack of resources, minds and passion. “But do you know how many Calabrian companies there are with a turnover of more than five million euros per year? Five thousand! Yet most of them are unknown even to those who live in the area.” When asked where the success of his fellow countrymen in Italy and around the world comes from, he quotes Corrado Calabrò, great jurist and poet, former president of AgCom: “we had an extra push, that of having to overcome negative prejudices. Working three times as hard, and far from home, to prove our worth.” Even if it seems incredible, the first graduates from a Calabrian university date back to 1974. Before that it was necessary to study elsewhere, like Strati who took the ferry to Messina from Reggio. “And we were the ‘closest’, for the others it was much more complicated”.
At the time the attitude towards the Calabrians, and the southerners in general, was certainly not tender. “When I moved to Venice to work at the ‘Gazzettino’, it was the end of the ’70s, there was great distrust towards emigrants. Today the situation has changed. President Jole Santelli, who is no longer with us, understood that the reputational aspect is fundamental and that the narrative needed to be changed. We are talking about an incredible territory, with three national parks, 800 kilometers of coastline, an invaluable artistic, archaeological and landscape heritage. It no longer makes sense to talk only about crime.”
It is no coincidence that there is no crime news in “Calabria Live”. “It is missing, like sport, because there are already many others who deal with it. I’m interested in telling stories that don’t find space elsewhere.” And Santo Strati has told many stories, starting from the infamous revolt in Reggio Calabria in 1970, “a year and a half of madness and anger” described day by day in “Buio a Reggio”, truly a monumental work constructed over 50 years ago by Luigi Malafarina, Franco Bruno and a nineteen-year-old Strati, now the only survivor of that work, re-edited in 2020. The four volumes of that time have become a thousand pages with images of the local and national protagonists: Pertini, Fanfani, the young DC deputy Sergio Mattarella who invokes “the guarantor force of democratic institutions, of firm condemnation of violence and hooliganism”.
A thousand illustrious Calabrians are instead told in the book “La Calabria nel cuore”, written with Peppino Accroglianò, who for over thirty years rewarded the children of his beloved region, until his death in 2021: “There is the Nobel Prize winner Renato Dulbecco , four presidents emeritus of the Constitutional Court and then hundreds of servants of the institutions, great managers, scientists, intellectuals, politicians, athletes, entrepreneurs. There is also the former Argentine president Mauricio Macri, awarded in unexpected times.”
His last years as a privileged observer are condensed in “Calabria, Italia”, released in 2023. If we ask him to summarize the evils of his land, he has no hesitations: “the main problem is the lack of vision. The old politicians looked to future generations, now they focus on the next election, if it goes well, and the day after tomorrow if it goes badly. And then they haven’t read Machiavelli: the Prince must first surround himself with the right collaborators.”
But the column of strengths is much more populated, and the enthusiasm of Strati, the driving force behind its thousand activities, is stronger than ever: “Just think of the leap that the food and wine sector has made in recent years: it could be imported model of the Napa Valley, bringing thousands of people on tasting tours of wineries that now have international relevance. Or how much religious tourism could grow, with the thousand-year-old traditions, the spectacular processions, the cult of Natuzza Evolo whose beatification process is open and which gathers devotees from all over the world. And then we could build a Southern Book Festival, attract trekking enthusiasts thanks to the beauty of the Basilian Way, attract multinational investments with the incentives of the Special Economic Zones. I could continue, but I have to leave: tomorrow Mattarella will arrive to visit two industrial excellences of my land…”. (by Giorgio Rutelli)
