 Milano - la prima città?
Take a tour round Milan with a local like Germano Azzioni and you soon learn of the pride that the Milanese feel for the city, and the distance that exists between them and the rest of the country. Though he says it with a joking tone, he's serious when he claims that Milan is not the second city of Italy but 'la prima'. And he's ready with a powerful barrage of reasons why: Milan is 'la capitale del commercio, della finanza e dell'industria' the capital of commerce, finance and industry. It is also, he says, 'la capitale morale', the moral capital, because Rome has throughout the centuries been considered not just the home of the secular and religious power, but also of vice and corruption. Milan, on the other hand, a city dedicated only to hard work, boasts a far cleaner track record.
Describing the character of the Milanese people, Azzioni says that they take pride in their success, and their sophistication, and place a high value on material wealth. He agrees with the rest of the nation's stereotypes, that they are 'fieri, arroganti, ricchi e generosi', proud, arrogant rich and generous. He revels in the city's role of innovator, 'Noi non seguiamo la moda, la facciamo', we don't follow fashion, we make it.
He certainly knows how to sell it to you. But Italians from other parts of Italy have another way of describing Milanese life: 'brutta e dura' - ugly and hard. They remind you that life in the northern city is light years away from 'la dolce vita' of other parts of the country, that the 'milanesi' are no happier than other Italians, and that their attitude towards 'i terroni', a pejorative term for the Southerners 'from the land' who come to Milan for work, reveals a far snobbier, darker side to the city. This is an age-old argument, between the north 'l'Italia settentrionale', and the south, 'l'Italia meridionale',or 'il mezzogiorno'. It's similar to the North-South divide in Britain, only far more extreme, perhaps because Italy only became a united country, rather than a collection of warring states, in the 1860s. There are several political parties in the North who play on these hostilities, in particular the 'Lega Nord', led by Umberto Bossi, which campaigns on a platform of complete separation from the south, and the creation of a new, independent state: 'La Padania'. It's made all the more complicated to visitors to the country when they try and work out where the dividing line falls. The answer is usually quite simple - about 10 miles south of wherever you are at the time. Though you're unlikely to hear many people singing the praises on Milan on the streets of Naples, you will hear them cursing the lazy southerners of the next region down, Calabria. Pity the poor fellow that lives at the end of the pier in the town at the tip of the toe! Links
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