«In Florence this time the game is open. We are no longer in Berlusconi’s time, when the centre-left had a monolithic unity and the centre-right had nothing left but a position of renunciation…”. COsimo Ceccuti, Giovanni Spadolini’s shadow man for years, is a professor who knows the powers of this city by heart due to internal conflicts. Super partes — from the hill of Pian de’ Giullari, where he leads the Nuova Antologia Foundation, legacy of the former republican prime minister — he observes: «The center-left is split into too many parts: on the right they understood it and put in place a civic figure like Schmidt, also supported by bourgeois families and a certain aristocracy, who until now had never put their noses out.”
The tension in the control rooms is palpable. We are in one of the few “red capitals” left to the Democratic Party. And a defeat here, regardless of the European Championships, would put Secretary Schlein offside. But the dem notables put it this way: “You win… you’ll wait 15 more days.” The referee, in fact, has not yet blown the whistle for the start, but the two challengers are already thinking about extra time. Because it is in the run-off that it will be understood whether the “civic” center-right, with the former director of the Uffizi Eike Schmidt, will manage to conquer Palazzo Vecchio. The only certainty today is that there will certainly be a “first time”: 1) The first female mayor of Florence, that would be Sara Funaro, outgoing councilor of the Democratic Party and niece of Piero Bargellini, unforgettable first citizen who led the rebirth after the Flood. 2) Or the first defeat of the centre-left since there has been direct election. There are 10 candidates in the field, but 4 of these are from the centre-left area; which becomes 5 if you also include Lorenzo Masi of the M5S. Because in the city that has always not spared itself clashes and revenge, in this battle for the candidatures the Democratic Party and its (potential) allies have given themselves a beating, starting from the primaries that were not held, which triggered the rift of Cecilia Del Re.
However, between the duelists Funaro and Schmidt there is one “third wheel”, quite insidious. She is Stefania Saccardi, deputy governor of Tuscany, very loyal to Matteo Renzi, but with its own and rather large pool of votes. And this will be precisely the slice of support that, abacus in hand, the Democratic Party will lack to win in the first round. The Democratic Party and Renzi searched for an agreement for a long time, then the table fell through. The conditions put on the table by the former prime minister were rather high: “Inadmissible”, according to the leaders of the Democratic Party Schlein traction, from which the order to close the bridges then came. It will be held for the run-off. Thus, the Machiavellian former prime minister set up a very harsh campaign against the Dems and, above all, anti Nardella, his former faithful squire to whom he handed over Florence when he moved to Palazzo Chigi.
A full-blown “counter-scrapping”, given that Renzi has engaged in a deadly battle against a good part of that ruling class that he himself led to power, scrapping the short-chain Pci-Pds-Ds as mayor. The center-right of “Italians First” has invested everything in a German. Schmidt, a skilled manager of cultural heritage and now on leave in Capodimonte, almost immediately fell out with the outgoing mayor Dario Nardella. The attacks of «Eike» received wide echo, precisely because they were launched by the helmsman of one of the most important museums in the world. A profile that did not escape the award-winning firm Sangiuliano-Donzelli, respectively minister of culture and right-hand man of Giorgia Meloni, who saw in Schmidt the right candidate to attempt a political turnaround that would end up in the history books. The whole campaign was in the name of change, against “the excessive power of the Democratic Party which has always governed everything and with terrible results”.
In Florence, after the “scrapping” of Renzi as mayor in 2009, a radical reshuffling of powers is underway. Two emblematic examples? Last October, Bernabò Bocca, president of Federalberghi, but above all former senator of Forza Italia, arrived at the helm of the Cr Firenze Foundation. A centre-right man, therefore, at the helm of what is a sort of “private safe”, from which almost 50 million a year in funding for the city arrives. An unthinkable turning point until some time ago, and Renzi had a hand here too. The other revolution took place in the Curia, with the farewell of Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, who arrived 15 years ago as a loyalist to the conservative Camillo Ruini. In its place Gherardo Gambelli, missionary in Africa, has arrived and chaplain of the Sollicciano prison, a perfect profile for Pope Francis, who chose him.
But how is Florence? Nardella, in his over 3,700 days as mayor, took on the “burden of change”, strengthening a dense network of tramways. The success of this choice, which also caused major traffic jams and discontent for construction sites, lies in the strong growth of users. But for the Florentines «safety and traffic» remain the two problems at the top of the list. And above all there is the onslaught of tourists to manage. A growth that, today, seems unstoppable: on the one hand it brings a lot of wealth, on the other it is finishing emptying the center of residents. It is the phenomenon of “income”, which Florence is intoxicated with. Ceccuti himself also underlines this, with a fitting quote: «In 1865 Francesco De Sanctis, while from here he wrote his famous History of Italian literature, he warned his fellow citizens: “Florence is like a beautiful woman who continues to look smugly at herself in the mirror, without noticing the increasingly numerous wrinkles on her aged face” – concludes the professor -. The millions of tourists are indeed a solid reassurance, but this income-based model must be changed. We need infrastructure and great modernity: starting from the airport, which has never been rebuilt in 40 years due to exasperating municipalism.”
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