The abandoned Italy that no one truly wants to take care of

There is an Italy that exists in the cracks of the walls, in the rusty gates, in the memory of those who still remember when those places were alive. It is the so-called minor Italy, a heritage that becomes no man's land in the absence of someone who takes care of something. Giulio Tremonti, a thoroughbred intellectual and reader of Fernand Braudel, has for years used a word that bureaucracy finds uncomfortable and that politics has learned to ignore: demanio. Not in the jargon of the offices. But in the more archaic, noble, painful sense of the term: the common heritage of a nation. The thing belonging to everyone which, the moment it becomes everyone's, ceases – through a sadly Italian contradiction – to belong to anyone.

Let us walk along the Adriatic coast, between Ortona and Vasto. Or in the Sannio hinterland. Or even along the via Emilia, where the minor stations closed in 1986 still garrison their tracks like faithful widows. Let us observe the demaniali castles of the South, the former fascist marine colonies of Romagna, the deconsecrated convents of Umbria, the abandoned barracks that occupy entire blocks in the centers of medium-sized cities. Let us look carefully. And let us ask: whose is this? The answer, always, is the same. It belongs to the State. It belongs to everyone. Therefore, to no one.

The paradox of Italian wealth, of what makes Italy Italy, is this. Shortly there will be a huge real equity, immobile capital, minor but also major, which will pass to a State that is not equipped to manage and enhance it. It will be formally more protected but also more concretely abandoned. The constraint that protects it from sale and from present and future taxes does not safekeep it from decay and oblivion. All while the mobile capital, circulating equity, shrinks due to that fatal dynamic that is transforming the Country into a user of services provided by foreign platforms, which have wiped out the value chain. And imposed alien models of life, work and identity.

The Romans had a precise concept to indicate the thing that belonged to no one: res nullius. It was everything that could be appropriated precisely because it lacked an owner. Italians, instead, with a thoroughly bureaucratic ferocity, have overturned this principle by creating goods that belong to everyone but which no one can appropriate. All justified as a defense against exploitation, but in reality also against use, against enhancement.

There are countries – France, first of all – where the minor public heritage has been systematically entrusted to local communities, to associations, to private individuals with destination constraints. Here the State has stopped acting as an absentee owner and has started acting as a trustee. It is not a sell-off, as Tremonti was criticized for: it is a transfer of care. In Italy, instead, the myth of public control is still preferred to the reality of abandonment, which in practice means control by no one.

Italy is the country with the highest density of historical, artistic and landscape heritage in the world. Which means, necessarily, that it is the country with the highest density of unfulfilled responsibility. Every abandoned village is an unpaid debt. Every disused barrack that rots is a waste not only of bricks but of possibilities: of tourism, of residency, of work, of identity. Broken down, a civilization is also measured by how it safeguards what it considers common. By how much care it reserves for what no one, in particular, has taken the trouble to claim.

The contrary of res nullius is not res privatae. It is res curata. It is res publica in the original sense. The thing that someone – a municipality, a foundation, an association, a private individual with restrictions, a State capable of delegating without abdicating – takes concrete care of.

Opening image: former Edoardo Agnelli Colony - Marina di Massa. Photo maxviator Via Flickr