No, this is not fiction. The scene of the two guys with sandpaper and a rag frantically trying to erase the two letters painted on one side of the altar dedicated to the Fallen of the First World War, just because they hurt, is something halfway between harsh reality and the theater of the absurd. the eye of the director of the TV series with Bocci “Alex Bravo”. Well done Alex, much less the operators who added scar after scar to the Istrian stone, unknowingly erecting a monument to their own imprudence. But what were the diligent technicians thinking while from the top of the Passetto symbol they worked hard – in an inevitably vain attempt – to wash away the red stain, leaving perhaps an even worse one, which reflects the halo of their naive gesture? Did they want to be champions of decorum or executioners in the army of degradation? Did they aspire to the status of heroes of restored dignity and the sacredness of the memory of the martyrs? Alas, they were only the miserable authors of a clumsy and senseless action.
Maybe they realized it when the local police officers came running shouting “Stop! Stop!!”. And to the executive producer’s scolding. And in any case, it is difficult to say who will come out on top in the duel for the last foul between the fools who mistreat public goods, the heritage of all of us and of the history of Ancona. You don’t know whether this unbridled attack of acute cleaning is more unacceptable or the color splash offensive carried out across half the city by hooligans with felt-tip pens. Lost in their recklessness, not content with having distributed bruises of degradation on the skin of the capital, the vandals armed with spray launched their personal challenge to the Palace. The municipal administration has developed a plan to remove the scratches embroidered by artists of ugliness from the walls of buildings.
It also relied on nanotechnologies applied against the giants of incivility: a blessed gel that dissolves the paint which is washed away and disposed of. Well, the workers tested it. And it works. But not against the harder-than-stone heads of irreverent brats. What did they do? They immediately returned to the attack with the indecipherable paintings. Once the surfaces next to the entrance to the Traiano park in via XXIX Settembre were cleaned, the impertinent design immediately reappeared.
Access to the public toilets in Piazza Roma freed from the colored stains of scribble? Their scratching returns. And – ironically, but also possible assistance to those who are hunting him – the letters are the same and make up the word: “sgarro”, almost a provocative admission of guilt. And it would also be time to find the culprits of the havoc of the city’s aesthetics and public morality. Politics tries, sending anti-degradation teams on patrol, setting up a video surveillance system connected to the control room set up at the traffic police headquarters (which, however, will be fully operational when the local police force is reinforced), and announcing the use of vigilantes to catch incorrigible writers with their hands on the can. But all this is not enough, so much so that we still have to witness the raids of vandals and lend ourselves to extemporaneous actions of improvised and unlikely avengers of degradation. One might think, then, that the time has (also) come for a pincer action. Administrators: restore true, effective and visible decorum to the walls of Ancona; find the cheap pseudo artists and punish them. That without the doodle sprayers and – therefore – without entire facades covered in graffiti, there wouldn’t even have been the geniuses who wanted to clean up the somewhat algebraic sentimental flicker imprinted on the altar of the Monument, where once again they sacrificed themselves civic sense and human intelligence. With the hope that those two letters “N+S” can transform from a message of love to the acronym of a civil battle cry: No Discounts.
*Head of the Ancona editorial team
of the Corriere Adriatico
