Luca Zaia, in September 1986, an eighteen-year-old left for Spain with his best friends, in his mother’s white 2 Cavalli with Treviso license plates, the radio screaming “La Isla Bonita” by Madonna… Where have we already heard this story?
“In the interview I did with Giovanni Viafora in August about the series courier “life journey”. After I remembered that adventure, I went to re-read the memoirs I wrote at that time. I drew inspiration from him for my new book.”
Title: “Be Fast, Move Slow.”
“It’s the sage advice our mothers gave us in Venice, but it’s also a metaphor for life.”
Training trip. Including girls. Was it your first time?
Anus. Meaning that the first time came later. Girls were absent from my life, and that is why I remember the meeting with Enas so well. “We fell in innocent love.”
Who are his friends?
“The Count, a true aristocrat: today he is one of the largest producers of Prosecco.” And the engineer, who never became an engineer, but was a mathematics phenomenon, was the one who passed the homework in class. Now plant flowers.”
In Marbella, you are fed by Carmen, who is nostalgic for Francoism.
“The whole book is a glorification of freedom. Freedom from all forms of dictatorship and restrictions: Franco’s dictatorship, about which we had heated discussions with Doña Carmen; and communism, which collapsed three years later, in 1989, with the Berlin Wall. Then customs, passports, currency: all the things “That we left behind. We are the generation of Europe, the generation of freedoms and rights.”
The League has changed its mind about Europe. Bossy dreamed of bringing the North to you; Salvini strongly criticizes.
“I am also critical of management in Europe: bureaucratic, rigid and self-referential. But I am convinced that our horizon is the United States of Europe.”
But if the United States of Europe and regional autonomy are created, what is left of Italy?
“It will become a federal state, where citizens will have more importance and the country will be more efficient. As in Germany.”
You wrote in your previous book that rights should be guaranteed and expanded, not limited. What does he refer to?
“From end of life to gender issues, young people show us the way. For them, freedoms, starting with the freedom to love, are natural. It is a grave mistake to refer to young people as lazy. This has always happened: our grandparents accused our parents, and our parents accused us. We must put an end to this liturgy. Today young people are put into a corner. Underrepresented and unheard.”
Is Veneto also underrepresented?
“It has been.” Thanks to our work, the situation is completely different: on an absolute level. Of course, it still happens that we see stereotypes of the past come back to life, when a Venetian appears in a drama or film and is portrayed as a caricature.”
What was she like when she was little?
“A mix between Emile Rousseau and Truffaut’s wild boy. We smoked cigarettes made from cornstalks, drank water from horsetail, and ate berries. Since I was six years old, I worked every summer after school in my father’s workshop: that’s how I saved money to leave, in 1986. I had never gone anywhere. I remember that every summer I used to wash the caravan of the city doctor who went to Greece or Turkey, inhaling scents that I had never smelled before, and cleaning with spongy dust and sands of colors that I had never seen before. For us Venetians, traveling meant going into the army, or emigrating. My parents went on their honeymoon to Venice: from Pipano, a small village in Godega Sant’Urbano, to the left of Piave, about fifty kilometers away; But they had never been to Venice in their lives.”
Why Spain?
He was a symbol of youth and post-Franco freedom. “And there was bullfighting.”
Have you seen her?
“Yes, and I found it an indescribably barbaric spectacle; Although sometimes he is a particularly brave bull,…Sorry, he was pardoned and given a second life as a breeder. Today’s children are naturally animal rights activists. We have become it. Horses are the biggest passion in my life, and I even tried to buy one in Spain. “Today young people are at the forefront: for them, the struggle for the environment, for the environment is taken for granted.”
The right is very lukewarm on climate change.
“I’m not a fundamentalist, but I’m not a denier. Of course climate change exists. The man puts a turbo on it. We must learn to respect nature even in small gestures, in everyday life; But we must also recover our historical memory. When the Faya storm in 2017 destroyed three million cubic meters of forest, or one hundred thousand hectares, it was said to be the largest ever. “I studied and discovered that from 1990 until today there have been 32 storms in Europe, including a storm in the Black Forest that destroyed 40 million cubic metres.”
How do you remember this devastation?
“Extension of death, they looked like corpses after a battle. An electric shock was needed to revive the corpse. In the face of those felled trees, Cortina 2026 was invented. Olympic Games: Here’s how to bring life back to our mountains.”
Even on the freedom of love, the truth is lukewarm.
“The compass is the words of Pope Francis: ‘Who am I to judge a homosexual who is searching for God?’”
Do you like Pope Francis?
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Many paradoxes have been raised about the Venice Sex Reassignment Centre.
“The Registry Office’s sex reassignment law dates back to 1982. People who have undergone surgical sex reassignment can do so after a complex operation. We are talking about a few cases. It is a social welfare benefit recognized by law. The Venice Center also wants to provide answers to many reproductive system diseases that require surgery; And last but not least is also the extreme case of hermaphroditism. Many laws dealing with ethical issues have been challenged. Even those related to abortion, which must be implemented. Or organ transplantation: it was criticized at the time; Today is a great achievement.”
organ transplant?
“In Veneto we have excellent surgeons like Cielo, who perform liver transplants on babies as young as a few months old; Gerosa, the first to transplant a heart from a cadaver; Raya, who performs lung transplants; Rigotti, who performed three thousand kidney transplants. For example but not limited to. As Gracci’s mother says, these are my jewels. People who, with their employees, change the lives of those who are suffering.”
How do you judge Little Indy’s story?
“It should not be a judge or institution that separates the devices. In Italy, we rely on the ruling of the Court of Cassation in the DJ Fabo case. At that time, Pepino Englaro also had to obtain a ruling from the judiciary. Instead, I believe an end-of-life law is needed, to protect the freedom of the individual.”
If it were up to you, what would you do?
“Personally, I want to be able to decide my fate with full freedom of conscience.”
How do you judge the Meloni government?
“Georgia Meloni, the president, with her government, puts her heart into what she does. Of course the international situation does not help.”
She cannot run for a third term in Veneto.
“Because of a wrong law that limits the freedom of citizens. There are those who claim that this system avoids centers of power, but that it therefore makes voters look stupid, who instead show in every election that they know how to reward their managers or send them home. Mayors and district presidents have a two-term limit; MPs can stay for life. It’s not right.”
Will he run for the European elections?
“That’s not on my mind.” I intend to fulfill the commitment I made to the people of Venice. “I am fully focused on my work.”
The year after her trip to Spain, in 1987, she voted for the first time. What party?
“The Venetian League”.
Why?
“Because I remember the arrogance with which automobile engineers treated mechanics like my father, who would bring cars for inspection and wait for hours without being able to say a single word. The state, the public apparatus, showed its Bourbon side and its lack of respect for the citizen. “I have spent my political life correcting this distortion.”
Is Italy a right-wing country?
“Italy is a country of common sense. Common sense lies in moderation, which can be on the right or on the left. I dream of a political commitment that protects the weak, imposes the rules of civil coexistence, and increases freedom. From commercial rights to civil rights. Citizens are not cavemen traumatized by moral issues; They are much more advanced than we think. Starting with the eighteen-year-olds, in whom I see that desire for escape and freedom that brought me into the white 2 Cavalli so many years ago.”
Is he still there?
“Of course, the desire for freedom and the white 2 Cavalli. My father is restoring it, screw by screw, nail by nail. It will go better than before.”
“Prone to fits of apathy. Introvert. Award-winning internet evangelist. Extreme beer expert.”
