Italians di Beppe Severgnini 
Il Twitter del direttore 
It was 20 March 1986 when McDonald’s opened in Rome’s Piazza di Spagna amidst heated controversy. This American colossus and symbol of globalised consumerism had burst into the centre of Rome, to set up shop in front of the most beautiful flight of steps in the world. All hell broke loose, but McDonald’s opened just the same. The mayor at the time was the Christian Democrat, Nicola Signorelli.
This was the year when Chernobyl exploded, Bettino Craxi was prime minister, and Federico Fellini’s Ginger and Fred was on at the cinema. It seems like a long time ago. In 2016, the planet is busy with other matters, the government is led by Renzi and Italian cinemagoers are queuing up to see Checco Zalone’s comedy Quo Vado. Some things never change, though, and McDonald’s is always on the look-out for new places to open. This time it wants Piazza Duomo in Florence, and all hell has broken loose again. Has history come back to haunt us on the banks of the Arno?
“It will be the best McDonald’s in the whole of our international chain,” promised CEO Roberto Masi. The forecasts are certainly impressive, with two million customers expected, and therefore two million burgers on the grill in the shadow of Brunelleschi’s dome. Many will be surprised: Florence has long lost her virginity, and is now overwhelmed by mass tourism; the rules of civilised coexistence are flouted every day. The city centre is the realm of illegal hawkers, fake street artists, and hordes of tourists on package trips. So where’s the scandal in a new McDonald’s?
The Florentines can be a difficult lot, we know. But there’s more behind the McDuomo war, as it has been dubbed. For months, the mayor, Dario Nardella, has been engaged in an offensive to defend the identity of the city centre: no more junk for sale on the pavements, no more kebabs, no more booze minimarkets, and no more fast food on every corner. He wants to focus instead on local crafts and traditional shops (finding a haberdasher’s, stationer’s or grocer’s is no easy task). The aim is to convince those Florentines who resist inside the walls not to look for a house in the suburbs, but to defend the dignity of a living city against prevailing mass consumerism. The moves for liberalisation decided by Europe may be admirable in principle, but they spell disaster for cities of art.
Here the Bolkestein directive is seen as a curse because it means that everyone can do what they want. Nardella has thus changed tack, and is focusing on the hard-earned protection provided by UNESCO regulations. The upshot is that according to a plan that has just started to be implemented, fast food will have a tough time in Florence. For a start, at least half of the food sold in restaurants, unless agreed otherwise, must be locally produced. At McDonald’s, which has long been using beef from the local Chianina breed of cattle, they did not bat an eyelid: “We’re ready, but we’ll decide whether ‘local’ means Italian, regional or provincial ....”.
A legal battle is clearly on the horizon. In Florence quite a few people would have bet on the city council making an exception for such an important multinational, but they were wrong, and Nardella laid down the law: “Never in that square; not ever”. Maybe the 16,000 signatures collected in a few hours on Facebook, shouting “No to the new McDonald’s”, had an influence. The mayor would deny it, but he must have made a quick calculation: what price would he have paid in terms of popularity if he had found himself on the wrong side of a campaign against the fast-food multinational opening in the shadow of Santa Maria del Fiore? The title of the film had already been decided: “Nardella, Strong with the Weak and Weak with the Strong”. Directed by the Italian Left, the 5-Star Movement and their sponsors. But he turned down the part, clearly interested in other types of films. Who can blame him?
English translation by Simon Tanner
www.simontanner.com
