GOVERNANCE, FINANCE AND LAW: THE THREE GREAT PILLARS OF THE SRAIT BRIDGE

THE PARADOX OF INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH ITALY

E: Maybe diving into your research topic could give us some more specific insight on how you put all this into action.

S: Yes, so for example, for the site-specific work of the Ponte sullo Stretto I started thinking about how power gets expressed within politics, and I started to see a little bit of a connection with how myth could be an organising tool, which ended up being, for me, very helpful, so I guess that’s kind of a moment where the centre pushes for experimentation rather than just tradition.

E: I am personally very curious, how and why did you decide to go into the case of the Ponte di Messina? Does it have a name in English?

S: Well, there’s not really a name, I guess it’s “the bridge”. Anyway, in the past I had done a lot of work researching different kind of colonial structures in Ireland, when I was still based in Ireland, but when I started this course, I knew that I wanted it to be focused on the south of Italy because I thought it would be a great opportunity to be able to do field work, as it’s a place accessible to me, but also because there were certain aspects about the south of Italy that I only knew about through familial knowledge and from stories but that I didn’t feel like I had a deep enough understanding of, why things were the way they were.

Anybody who drives around Calabria or, I feel predominantly in the south sees that it is surrounded by abandoned houses, half built roads, and incomplete infrastructure, it’s scattered across a very gorgeous landscape, destroying the territory and the terrain and seeing this alongside the ongoing regional disparity in essential infrastructure raised questions for me about how these visible ruins relate to deeper social and political histories, so I had to look further into this sort of phenomena.

“I started making a database of unfinished infrastructure in Calabria, and tried to document why they became abandoned, how much money was spent, at what point of the construction phase they were, just to understand what was actually happening. “

E: I think we can definitely describe it as a phenomena, it’s very diffused, and very common to me, I am from the south of Italy, from Lecce, and after a while you tend to somehow see past it because it’s so common that it becomes a natural unnatural element in the environment, until you actually focus on it and see it for what it really is, which is “a punch in the eye” is the expression here.

S: yeah, it translates well, no, it’s true, I think it’s so bizarre that it feels a little bit ridiculous to even try to look into, because there’s all of this unfinished stuff everywhere, so I started making a database of unfinished infrastructure in Calabria, and tried to document why they get abandoned, how much money was spent, at what point of the construction phase they were, just to understand what was actually happening.

So because of this idea of, the south being a ‘problem’, and that, you know, this kind of myth of southerners being incapable of an organised society in the same way as the north, there were all these huge funding packages getting sent to the south, like the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, then there was the pacchetto Colombo in the 70s, and all of these funding packages were really ineffective, and actually left mass graveyards of cement, and Eco-mostros, so what I was to starting to tie in was that actually this kind of myth of the south was enabling the state to use infrastructure as a kind of “medicine” for all issues of the south.

If we just send them loads of money and build lots of large-scale infrastructures, the problems are solved. That obviously didn’t work and didn’t happen, but that same kind of mentality is still continued now, and so when we look at the Ponte, it has the same rhetoric behind it, that the state says, “oh, well, if we give them the bridge, then the south will be solved, or the issues in Calabria and Sicily will be resolved”, when actually it’s a lot deeper than that, and it takes a lot of blame away from the reasons why the south is seen as this problem : not because of historical exploitation of the south or damaging national policy, but supposedly because of the character of its people. These projects, rather than addressing inequality, often reinforced stereotypes of southern inefficiency while enabling private profiteering.

E: In my opinion it’s also due to a lot of long-term policies that have been made just to enforce more of a division

S: yes, and enforce more power dynamics, making local governments actually have less agency. I feel like infrastructure has played a huge role in that, because, for example, with the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, the promise of capital investment in the South through infrastructure projects can be seen as a myth given that the bulk of capital for the these projects was redirected back to the North, so, it’s hard to look at anything in the south without trying to understand the subaltern relationship between the north and south as a necessary part of the story, I suppose. Through the data I’ve collected thus far I can state that 70% of all unfinished infrastructure in Italy is in southern regions, and the only region where that number continues to grow every year is Sicily.

THE BRIDGE AS A SYMBOL BETWEEN MYTH AND REALITY

E: When did they first start talking about the possibility of there ever being a bridge, do you know?

S: Well, yeah, so, in 1860, during Risorgimento time there were ideas of the bridge as a unifying force, but also there are stories the Roman Empire wanted to build the bridge, they wanted to transport goods from Sicily to the mainland, and so they tried to build a bridge. Honestly, it goes back so far, and then Mussolini wanted to build the bridge. I feel like every, kind of, right-wing guy in Italian history wanted to build the bridge, you know?

E: I think it’s a clear pattern. S: Yeah. It’s true. It’s always an expression of power with this bridge, because it’s more this symbol of nationalistic unity than it is a bridge. The main moment where the construction ideas grew was, from the 1950s onwards. It was created as a legal entity in the 1970s. So, from then on, the Italian state had to somewhat, prioritise it, because the legal body of it had been created.

E: Okay, so, what did you find out through your research?

S: It would be nice to go back to the way that I was trying to organise it, so through the idea of myth building. I was looking a lot at 20th century myth theory, and what comes around in most of these as a structure of how a myth can be created is that: there’s a problem area, there’s a problem space, and there’s a governor, a king, a power source, and they begin to select a scapegoat, this is the ‘othering’ process – which is usually, someone who’s poorer, someone who looks different, someone who acts different, and this can be a very long process.

Then, once you’ve got your scapegoats, what it allows for is the power source to inflict violence on the scapegoats, because it will be seen as if once violence is inflicted on the scapegoats, a lot of the issues are resolved. When the state does something in this manner, let’s say for example, the expropriations for the bridge, or it destroys lands to build a dam that they never finish, that’s an example of violence that’s getting enacted on the scapegoats, they say “well, once that is done, then all the issues of the south will be resolved”.

I started looking at Colapesce, a very important Messinese myth. (I think there’s also a version from Napoli and other areas). Colapesce is the myth of a half man, half fish, and the fact that the island of Sicily is standing on three pillars but one of the pillars is crumbling, and Colapesce replaces one of the pillars to keep the island floating, and so, I was trying to understand, how do we keep a myth, or a mythical infrastructure, like the Ponte, alive? Because it doesn’t exist physically, but it exists in public consciousness so vividly, and even without existing, it’s already impacted the communities and the territory of the Stretto. In the same way that a myth doesn’t have a physical form, but it has real world effects.

I asked myself: what is the scaffolding that’s keeping up the myth of the bridge? I tried using the same three pillars as Colapesce, and so, I looked at governance, or policy, I looked at finance, and I looked at law, and, actually, how those three pillars have been allowing this myth of the bridge to stay alive, since at least the 1950s, if not longer.

E: Governance, finance, and law, so who is Colapesce in this case?

S: Well, it’s hard, because Colapesce in the myth is the scapegoat, he is the one now stuck under the Stretto, forever, so, I guess, I don’t have a character for Colapesce, to be honest.

E: Could he be identified in the local communities maybe?

S: Probably yes, because they’re doing so much work to support their home, the island, and the whole Stretto territory, actually on that note I think that it’s important to mention the “No-Ponte” movement, who were so helpful for my research. I went twice in the summer, and they had a headquarters in Torre faro, which is near land that would get expropriated if the bridge gets built, and so they took over this building, and they turned it into the No-Ponte headquarters and called it Casa Cariddi (Scilla and Cariddi is another very popular myth from Sicily), they had it for three months, they were organising workshops, talks and informational discussions about the engineering of the bridge. I think that it should be widely known that they have been protesting against it this since the Berlusconi-Ponte idea.

So that’s nearly 20 years and they’ve put on hundreds of different protests and events and festivals about educating people on the values and reasons behind the No bridge movement. This said, it’s clear how one of the pillars, the law, is systematically delegitimising the resistance through legal avenues brought forward by the state, so instead of protecting the people, it’s protecting large-scale infrastructure and business. For example, there is the decreto di sicurezza..

HOW ARE THE CITIZENS REACTING?

E: Yes, it’s also a national issue and a big topic at the moment, yet a lot of people are actually completely ignorant in regards to the content of the decreto di sicurezza and what this puts at stake.

S: There are a few of the key points within the decree that I guess really focused on intensifying the criminalisation of dissent towards infrastructure. And the fact that it kind of was coinciding just when the bridge project was getting more accelerated. It felt like this kind of very intense kind of conjuncture.

E: Perfect timing, right?

S: Perfect timing, exactly. There’s a lot about the criminalisation of passive protest as well. They’ve very much highlighted that anybody participating in a protest or a revolt, which includes passive resistance, can face imprisonment between one to five years. Which also means that within the territory of the speculative infrastructure and on construction sites, police will have extra jurisdiction and will be allowed to express further kind of power in these areas, because the areas of the construction sites are where people are usually protesting the most.

E: And so, the people who are directly impacted by the making of this sort of band-aid, infrastructure should no longer be much of a problem .

S:Yes, yeah, exactly.

E:So if we go back to the Ponte, what has it meant for the local community so far and what could it mean in practical and legal terms if it were to be built?

S: Legally, a good example could be the 102 citizens from the surrounding cities of the Straits that brought the Stretto di Messina S.P.A to court in a class action lawsuit, which is a huge thing to have done. And again, their punishment was far bigger than any other in a similar scenario, if you get me. They were given a 300,000 euro fine that they have to pay to Stretto di Messina spa, a state run company.

And also what I thought was so insane about this case was that the citizens had asked to remain anonymous and the court denied that and released the names. And so again, you’re actually putting these people in a very direct line of possible harm.

E: And so- Punishment.

S: Yes.

E: And I guess that by contemporarily delegitimising the use of legal defence, you’re making people feel like they can’t use legal avenues. Like normal citizens don’t feel like they can use legal avenues anymore.

S: It’s kind of a performative display of authority, reducing the law to a tool that’s only accessible by the perpetrator, or by the state or by the company. And it’s not a tool that the normal person can use.

E: And secondly discrediting the legal aids themselves. The minister of international affairs recently said that international law is important. But up to a certain point.

S: The Supreme Court also was against the decreto di sicurezza. So the Supreme Court released an amazing play-by-play of the entire decreto and clearly stated in each point how things were unconstitutional, that certain elements should be considered unlawful. And that’s the actual house of law in Italy saying that. But the government maybe amends certain things, but doesn’t actually take it into full consideration.

To move on to the next pillar, finances, what I wanted to try to explain was that the bridge is super operational and super productive actually as a non-existent bridge. So in this moment of suspension or speculation, the bridge can be super productive because it is actually kind of generating finance and generating speculative finance in this moment that it doesn’t yet exist. And then as soon as it gets constructed, this kind of beautiful moment for the investors and the state, disappears.

And so I guess I wanted to also show that it’s productive for them to have this very extended moment of suspension: will we build it, will we not? You know, there’s actually an aspect of that that is quite productive for the private companies and the state. The two parties that are in control of the bridge haven’t really changed in the last 22 years. So that’s since, just about Berlusconi time.

But the CEO of the Stretto di Messina Spa remains Pietro Cucci. The company that was entrusted to construct the bridge and the works around it has remained Eurolink Consortium, which is WeBuild as well. So there’s the kind of private party and then there’s the public government owned group. And so those two groups actually haven’t changed at all. They’ve changed names to hide certain things. But the actual structure of the groups and the companies has not.

E: Do they keep claiming funds? How does it make them profit?

S:One key aspect is what happens when the bridge project gets terminated, and it’s already been cancelled twice, in 2006 and 2013. Each time, the financial repercussions are immense. The private consortium and the state must agree in advance on compensation clauses, essentially deciding who owes whom if the bridge isn’t built. During the last termination, the state paid around €700 million in damages to the Eurolink Consortium, when the bridge was valued at €3 billion.

Now, with the project valued at €13 billion, the stakes are far higher. Someone is clearly benefitting from delay: in August this year, the government finalised new contracts with Eurolink that include a termination clause imposing a penalty of over €1 million per day of delay. Every day the bridge isn’t built, the state owes the private company that sum.

This exposes the state to enormous financial risk and effectively guarantees that capital continues to flow to contractors, regardless of whether construction ever happens. It’s a mechanism for diverting public money into private hands, a continuous transfer of state funds into private investment. This pattern has defined the relationship between the state and the Strait of Messina company since its creation in 1971.

Some researchers have tried to calculate how much money has already been spent on the bridge, but it’s difficult to determine.

E: Well, with a 700 million euro fine for a non-existing bridge I can kind of already side with the no ponte movement.

S: Exactly, exactly.

E: I mean. If it was granted to Sicily, I’m quite sure there would have been lots of other areas in which to invest.

S: Absolutely. There’s an investigation done in 2023 by Italian journalists Milena Gabanelli and Massimo Sideri. And I think they came to a figure of about 1.2 billion that has already been spent on the bridge since the 1980s. That’s an insane amount of money that in the two regions of Sicily and Calabria could really necessarily be spent on other things. I think that the communities that live there should be the ones to decide.

Every year about 12 million people cross the Strait of Messina, either tourists or people going to and from university and work and the link, the ferry infrastructure that currently exists and the boats that currently exist are functional and they’re historically quite important.

But the members of the No-ponte movement and the local community, have been asking for improvements of the ferries. So asking for greener ferries, less polluting, faster ferries or more of them, so you’re not waiting as long, especially in the summer months. And actually under the Draghi government in 2021, about 57 million euro of EU funds had been allocated for the purchase of non-polluting green, faster ferries over the Strait of Messina. And this was an amazing thing.

And then when the government changed, these funds were actually diverted under Matteo Salvini. These funds were actually diverted to finance the bridge. So what the bridge has done is put the people of the Straits into a limbo, because the things that they know could easily be done and effective, like getting greener ferries that would cost far less, that would be far quicker to do. And that would actually actively change people’s experience of crossing the Strait. I was trying to understand that while this bridge isn’t physical, that it was still actively doing things, so it was still actively reallocating money, spending money.

E: What about social dynamics? I was talking to a friend of mine and she was telling me about the “pilone” that they have in Messina and how young generations now gather there to make sense and make use of one of the Ecomostros left behind during the whole process.

S:Yes, the pilone is right by the beach, and it’s enormous. What’s fascinating is that there are two of them — one on the Calabrian side and one in Sicily — facing each other across the Strait. They were built to carry electricity to Sicily and each stands at around 200 metres high. The proposed bridge, though, would be roughly 400 metres, double the height of these already monumental structures. Because of the earthquake risks, Messina is an incredibly flat city, so the pilone is visible from almost anywhere. It’s surreal to imagine something twice its height dominating that skyline.

I’m curious to see what happens with Wednesday’s decision, since the government now has to determine whether to accept the ruling that the bridge project should be halted or to move forward regardless.

E: The first few interviews for now say that they definitely intend to push on with the project and get it done.

S: I know, it seems there’s kind of no stopping them.

E: Would you like to make a general comment on this last ruling by the Corte dei conti?

S: I have a lot of faith in the No-Ponte movement and the work they’re doing. What’s surprising is that only this summer did people start to realise the scale of resistance. A friend from Puglia told me he’d always heard about the bridge but had never seen photos of the protests, and when he did, he was shocked to see thousands of people. At the last protest we joined in August, around ten thousand people filled Messina. People came from Villa San Giovanni, from Reggio, crossing by boat to demonstrate together. It was incredible to witness.

The movement deserves far more attention. They’ve become experts on the bridge’s engineering, financial, and legal dimensions, training themselves across all these areas. I’d love to see greater cross-regional solidarity, for example, between the No-TAP and No-Ponte struggles, because, at their core, they’re fighting the same extractive logic repeating across territories.

E: Very probably the same mechanism behind the myths that keep up the projects too.

S: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

E: All this makes me think about how important the principle and the right of self-determination of the people is. Especially with what is currently happening in Gaza and the west bank, for example, and how the pattern of denying the possibility of putting it into practice follows the same rhetoric no matter where you are.

S: Yes, I think it’s important to recognise that this is a phenomenon shared across the Global South. The use of unfinished or suspended infrastructure as a tool of state control has appeared repeatedly, from colonial to neoliberal campaigns. Placing the south of Italy within that lineage helps to make sense of its condition on a broader, global scale.

E: Maybe told this way it may also encourage some extra sense of solidarity.

S: Exactly. I don’t know where this kind of research will lead me and if I’ll be able to continue it and try to uncover a bit more that would maybe help the Noponte group. That would be amazing.

E: I guess you’re still in contact and I’m guessing that we still have a bit of a battle to bring forward.

S: Sadly, yes, for sure. But I do have a lot of faith in them and hopefully it’ll be OK. And I would like to say that it’s just the most beautiful place ever. It would be such a shame if Torre Faro and other similar places would get destroyed, they are so ecologically special. The water of the Strait of Messina is so particular and special and the land is too.

E: Would you like to leave us with a general piece of advice or a comment or anything you’d like to express for the new generation of the Mediterranean?

S: Oh, gosh. I don’t know. I think, read Gramsci. Let’s read up on these extractive relationships and understand how the South of Italy is also a part of that lineage. And la lotta prosegua!

E: That’s perfect. Sofia, on behalf of the whole YouthMed team, It was all incredibly interesting and I’d like to thank you ever so much for sharing this information with us, I wish you the best of luck.

S: Thank you so much for the support.