Trading places
In the first of a series of articles to mark
upcoming elections on both sides of the Med, John Hooper compares life in Italy and Spain and finds that it is not only in GDP that the Iberians
have the upper hand
'In Spain what is new tends to be seen as good, while in Italy the reverse is true': The new opera house in Valencia and the Colosseum in Rome.
Fate can be cruel in its timing.
General elections in Spain and Italy over the next few weeks will bring the differences between southern Europe's two biggest nations into painfully sharp contrast. The Spanish are going places while the Italians go round in circles. The very reasons for the two ballots are illuminating.
Spain goes to the polls on March 9 for the simple reason that its legislature is about to run its term. The Socialist leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, came to power unexpectedly after the Madrid bombings of 2004 as head of a minority government. Yet that seemingly fragile arrangement has endured for four years.
By contrast, his Italian counterpart and fellow centre-leftist, Romano Prodi, secured an overall - albeit razor-thin - parliamentary majority in 2006. The bickering among his coalition partners started almost immediately. Last month, after just 20 months in power, his unhappy alliance was brought down.
Spain's next administration will be its tenth since the 1978 constitution that set a seal on its transition to democracy. Italy's will be its 27th over the same period.
Spain's greater political stability is one key to its better economic performance. Over the past 12 years, its economic growth has been three times that of Italy's.
Even in areas where the Italians would seem to have a built-in advantage, they have slipped behind. Rome – the Colosseum, Forum and Vatican notwithstanding – gets fewer tourists nowadays than Barcelona. The same is true of industries in which Italians have centuries of experience. Today, the world's biggest fashion chain, Zara, is Spanish, as is Europe's largest bank, Santander.
Last December, Italians were appalled to learn that, in the previous year, Spain's real per capita gross domestic product had overtaken their own. For more than a century they had grown accustomed to regarding their Spanish 'cugini' or cousins with a sort of affectionate condescension. Yet here was the EU's statistics office telling them that their "poor relations" were actually richer.
The change has taken place with disconcerting speed. Wind back the clock just 27 years, to February 23 1981. Spain, still labouring to emerge from the shadow of General Francisco Franco's long dictatorship, is a country in deep trouble, gripped by economic recession and political crisis. The lower house of parliament is packed for a vote on the new prime minister when a man in a tri-corn hat and whiskers, like a character from a 19th century operetta, strides to the speaker's chair brandishing a pistol. Seconds later, one of the Civil Guards under his command opens fire, sending the MPs diving for cover.
The far right coup that Colonel Antonio Tejero spearheaded fell apart. But, for months afterwards, it was not unreasonable to fear that Spain - with its arch-conservative officer class and racked by Basque separatist violence - might become an enclave of Latin American-style turmoil in Europe.
It was, after all, pretty backward. The economy relied heavily on rustbelt industries. There were fewer library books per 100 inhabitants than in Morocco. And it was only three years since the repeal of a law that made adultery punishable by up to six years in prison. In practice, it applied only to women.
How different things were across the Mediterranean. In rich, cultured, fashionable Italy, terrorism was being overcome and the economy was surging towards the 'sorpasso' - the overtaking - that chest-swelling moment in 1987 when its official statisticians declared Italy's per capita GDP had outstripped Britain's (a claim that was subsequently discredited).
Perhaps because they are so keen to escape from their recent past, Spaniards crave to belong to the future. In Spain, what is new tends to be seen as good, be it a technological gadget or one of the many adventurous buildings commissioned in recent years like the Agbar Tower in Barcelona, the Valencia opera house or the Bilbao or Madrid airport terminals.
In Italy, where the recent past was a time of prosperity and continuity, when Italians walked tall in the world, the reverse is true. Look at any Roman newsstand and you will see what I mean: videos of the films of the comedian Toto, whose best work dates from the 1950s; posters made from stills of Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, made in 1960; gossip magazines packed with the doings of people like Al Bano, a 64 year-old showbiz veteran. The only structure of note to be built recently in the centre of the capital is Richard Meier's Ara Pacis museum. And most Romans loathe it.
But then Italy is a society in which old people – and thus old attitudes – have the upper hand. Silvio Berlusconi, who the polls suggest will be his country's next leader, is 71 years old. And to an extent outsiders find hard to credit, Italy remains a country in which decision-makers must operate within limits set by the Roman Catholic church.
Berlusconi's last government passed one of Europe's most restrictive in-vitro fertilisation laws. Prodi's tried, and spectacularly failed, to bring in legislation that would have given limited civil rights to unmarried couples, including gays.
The contrast with Zapatero's record could not be starker. His government legalised full-blown gay marriage ahead of even the Scandinavian nations and opened the way for "quickie divorces". Half the members of his original cabinet were women – a political gimmick, perhaps, but one that reflected a real and remarkable change in the status of women in a country whose language gave the world the word 'machismo'.
The surge of women into Spain's labour market over the past two decades is a key reason for its rapid economic growth. Its female employment rate has outstripped that of Italy and today there are proportionately more 'españolas' than 'italianas' at the highest levels in both politics and business.
Whereas the Italian language has remained unaffected by recent changes in the status of women (so a female lawyer, for example, is still an 'avvocato', Spanish has been revolutionised. Even gender-neutral words like 'jefe' - or manager - have acquired a specifically feminised version, so a woman boss is now a 'jefa'.
Spain's greater vibrancy is evident in the arts too. Pedro Almodóvar is now arguably the best-known director working in a language other than English. But he already has a younger, Spanish rival in Alejandro Amenabár, who carried off an Oscar three years ago at the age of only 34. Penelope Cruz, like Antonio Banderas and increasingly Javier Bardem, can lay claim to worldwide followings. The novelist Carlos Ruiz Zafón's dark, ingenious literary thriller, the Shadow of the Wind, was a global blockbuster. The architect Santiago Calatrava has left his mark on city skylines across the planet.
Among the few areas in which Italy is clearly ahead is with its national football team, which triumphed in the World Cup in 2006.
The intriguing question is whether the imbalance between the two countries will last – and whether this year's elections might mark a turning point. One way of viewing Spain's own 'sorpasso' is as a reversion to the historical norm. For most of the past five centuries, it was Spain - not fractured Italy – that was dominant. The other possibility, though, is that Spain has merely been catching up with Italy, and that now the two are roughly on a par, its dynamism will wane.
Both countries experienced a rush of confidence after joining the European Union: Italy as a founding member in 1956; Spain 30 years later. Though Spain's revival has lasted longer than Italy's, there are signs it could be running to an end. The construction boom that fuelled much of Spain's recent growth is petering out, as are the subsidies that have been showered on it from Brussels. The Basque separatist movement Eta is still killing. And Spanish politics, though stable, are brittle. Right and left are disturbingly polarised.
At the same time, there are signs that recent events – the reverse 'sorpasso', the untidy fall of the Prodi government, and a garbage crisis that has left thousands of tonnes of refuse on the streets of Naples – are finally galvanising Italians into reaction. They may just be straws in the wind, but there a revolt underway on Sicily against the payment of protection money to the Mafia, Italy's employers' federation has just elected its first-ever woman president, and millions of television viewers have failed this year to tune in to an event that embodies outdated cultural values, the week-long San Remo song festival.
For the first time in decades, moreover, Italian voters have a chance to bring about real generational change. Berlusconi's rival, Walter Veltroni, is only 52 – younger than Zapatero's opponent, Mariano Rajoy. He is running under the slogan "Don't change government. Change Italy" and has chosen a 26-year-old woman to stand as a candidate in place of the centre-left's longest-serving parliamentarian.
But the time for change is shorter than many Italians believe. Greece too has been catching up. La Stampa estimated last year that, at the current rate, it could overtake Italy in 2012.
Source: The Guardian
