Quality of life: why love and hate Reggio Calabria

This is a biased article. Better to say it now. The author was born in Reggio Calabria and lived in the province, in Rizziconi, in the Gioia Tauro Plain, until the age of 22. He has lived in Milan since 1992, but he returns there three to four times a year. He has his friends and affections there.

Loving Reggio Calabria and its territory is inevitable. Only those who do not know them, the vast majority of the few who will read this article, can fail to love them. Enter the National Museum, contemplate the Riace Bronzes for ten minutes, the time allowed to keep the two statues safe, calmly visit the other rooms that tell of the settlements and civilisation of Magna Graecia. Going out, taking a freshly baked brioche filled with ice cream at Cesare's kiosk and enjoying it on the seafront is a pleasure like few others are afforded. In front is Sicily, Messina, the puffs of Mount Etna, snow-capped in winter. For similar pleasures one goes to the ends of the earth, but few go to Reggio. Tourism is a hypothesis, despite the innate hospitality of the Calabrians.

The tour of the province, going up towards the Ionian coast, is a succession of incredible and unknown jewels: the abandoned village of Pentadattilo, hidden around five fingers of rock. The Grecanica area, where ancient Greek is still spoken, that of the lyric poets, with the mosaics of the Bova synagogue and the Caretta caretta turtles that lay their eggs in Brancaleone, Cesare Pavese's confinement. The Roman villa at Casignana, nothing to envy at Piazza Armerina. The excavations of Locri Epizefiri, the city founded by the Spartans that dominated Magna Graecia. The village of Gerace, a jewel with countless churches ranging from early Christian to Baroque, with its cathedral with columns taken from the temples of Locri. The Byzantine Stilo with the mysterious Cattolica, a hexagonal and esoteric temple. And then, descending to the Tyrrhenian Sea, the terraces on the Strait of Palmi and the Scoglio dell'Ulivo rock, the jewel Scilla with its castle dominating the Strait. The sandy beaches of the Ionian Sea and rocky beaches of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Costa Viola with its dense sea, the sheer mountain and deceiving currents, the Sirens of Ulysses. "The solitary creeks enclosed by overhanging rocks that take on the colour of seaweed born from the spray of the wave" (Ti amo Calabria, Leonida Repaci).

I hate you Reggio Calabria. Only those who left you, many of the few who will read this article, can understand this to the full. Reggio Calabria "u paisi i mi ncrisciu, mi 'ndi futtu e ogni cosa esti fisseria" (the land of I'm bored, I don't care and everything is unimportant, Nicola Giunta, a poet from Reggio in the early 20th century). Little has changed since then. Just read the ranking that puts Reggio in last place for quality of life. Last in services and environment; position 103 in business and work; 96 in demographics and society; 96 also in culture and leisure. The roads are eternally rutted and full of potholes, the hospitals - Locri, Polistena - saved by Cuban doctors while the people of Reggio go to the North for treatment, the public services are approximate, the transport non-existent. Either you have a car or you're dead. The city and province of contradictions. There is no work, everyone says (even the Istat data), but on the Reggio seafront, in summer, restaurants and bars are full of 'Waiter wanted' signs. The tyre shop in the writer's town has been craving an apprentice for two years, and the sign is always there (bumpy roads often lead to punctures). Young people run away, ranking 104. Young people go to university in the North and do not return. There are 318 old people for every 100 young people (the average for Italy is 136). The social lift has never started, merit is unknown ('Chistu è u paisi aundi si perddi tuttu, aundi i fissa sunnu megghiu i tia', this is the country where you lose everything and the fools are better than you. Always the very current Giunta). Justice and security are ranked 82, but those who know and frequent those places feel the perennial cloak of the 'ndrangheta, much more present than it appears, with people still lowering their voices when someone, perhaps from the North, unwisely speaks about it.

Every few years there is a surge of hope. The fifth steel centre at Gioia Tauro in the 1970s. The Reggio decree with the business centre and the Carabinieri NCO school in the 1980s; the Reggio spring with Mayor Italo Falcomatà, father of the current first citizen, Giuseppe, in the 1990s. Now the Pnrr that will have to build kindergartens, equip the transport company with public transport, redevelop the neighbourhoods. In the city where everything is eternal. Zaha Hadid's Sea Museum, designed in 2009, has just had an executive plan. Zaha Hadid has passed away, perhaps her museum will be built in less time than the 44 years of the Pellaro-Gambarie, the road that will connect the sea to Aspromonte. Waiting for the next movement of hope.