Paolo Roccatagliata © ANSA
No one will take the title of genius of the week away from him Paolo Roccatagliata, councilor of Municipality 2 of Milan who thinks one thing and does a hundred. 62 years old, proud affiliated with the Templar Order (whatever that means), who made headlines last year for having appeared naked in a committee meeting of his city council in videoconferencing, in 2024 he had not yet carved out the proverbial quarter of an hour of celebrity.
He made up for it on Thursday, uttering some frankly embarrassing phrases in the meeting of the council of which he is a member. According to what was reported in the press (The audio of the speech is also available on Fatto Quotidiano), the otherwise brilliant exponent of Brothers of Italy he expressed winged concepts such as “when a cyclist dies under a truck I’m sorry but not much”, or “losing your life on a bicycle is a considered risk”.
A delusional speech resulting from a confused approach
All in a speech with which Roccatagliata invited i cyclists to get off the bicycle and proceed on foot in some critical points (from the traffic point of view) of the city, as part of a reasoning (or rather: a regurgitation that claimed to be a reasoning) which started from the assumption that there there would be too many cycle paths in the city. The intent of the reckless statesman in the making was on the one hand to defend pedestrians “from the assault of bikes and scooters”, on the other to say that in any case cyclists hate him.
Underlining the argumentative poverty of the little brother (or brother?) would also be an excessive exercise, a bit like if an art critic wanted to review a scouring in the underwear. What is really scary about the Milanese councilor’s speech is undisputed self-centrism which acts as a framework and context for everything: the fact that the use of the car is never problematised, perceived as the absolute queen of mobility even if we were in 1960, in the midst of an economic boom powered by the Fiat 600.
Our development model is antiquated: too many have yet to understand it
The problem is exactly the inability of various sections of the population (however hard one may try, Roccatagliata remains nothing more than the indicator of a more broad popular sentiment) to make the mental shift necessary to at least give a repaint to a twentieth-century imagination. However, it so happens that the new millennium has made certain issues increasingly urgent (environment and mobility are two closely interconnected areas; as are productive activities and mobility), which instead remain completely foreign to those who are anchored to a development model very reluctant to come to terms with reality.
A model that puts goods before people, consumption over health (physical and mental), production over life. A model ready to be swept away by history, that history of which bicycles will remain the protagonists central. As for the local councilors of the Brothers of Italy, it’s easy for the wind to take them away, not too long from now.
