55	JOACHIM OF FIORE

In 2005 I was invited to run for mayor of San Giovanni in Fiore, in Calabria, the Calabria where I had roots.

In something I’d written, I had referred to Gioacchino da Fiore (Joachim of Fiore). Down there they have an institute of Gioacchino studies, a small journal on Gioacchino, and so on, and as soon as someone refers to Gioacchino they are all thrilled: our numbers have swollen by one!

I went in September 2004 and found a group of really sharp young people. In the parish hall we talked about so many things: culture, theater, the future, philosophy.

It was easy for me to get emotionally attached to that group of kids. A few months later, with the local and regional elections imminent, they told me, “We’d like to form a new party and run you as candidate for mayor.” I said, “If you guarantee I won’t be elected, I’ll be glad to, so as to bring in a few votes.” But in fact there was one ballot for the mayor and another for the list. If I had won, as they expected, I really would have had to be the mayor. I was already thinking about going down to San Giovanni in Fiore for a few days a week, mamma mia . . .

In politics I’ve always believed in the things I have done as I went along, and I did them with commitment and conviction. But I’m also well aware that for me San Giovanni in Fiore represented the family experience one more time, my invincible longing. I didn’t have Gianpiero anymore, I didn’t have Sergio anymore, I didn’t have my European parliamentary assistants. But there were the kids in San Giovanni in Fiore.

I waged an excellent election campaign, the crowds came out to hear me: a fag, from up north, a philosopher. We weren’t playing around. We had a fine long platform, one hundred points, all fully explained: tourism and local trades instead of a tradition of small clienteles living on state handouts; an end to “socially useful” (that is, useless) workers supported by the right because the right-wing candidate was a friend of Gianni Alemanno.

The traditional left, in power there forever, was careful not to accept me as its candidate. So I waged an election campaign against both the right and the permanent government of the left, and nothing changed.

I got 12 percent; the slate got 6 percent. We were more than trounced; we couldn’t even participate in the second round of voting. At that point I said, “Fine, since we’re not in the second round, let’s support the right. We have no reason to support a left that’s sunk to being pure powerbrokers like this lot. At least the right has never governed.”

And so I made myself fresh enemies. A journalist from L’Unità wrote that these people are a disgrace, they’re not worth two cents. We traded violent insults.

The business was more serious than I had imagined. I realized I had made a big mistake in thinking, “There can’t be any Mafia here, the people are so poor there’s nothing for them to suck on.” Wrong. There was the toxic waste. The kids had located the places where the rubbish was being stored and threatened legal action. The next day it had all disappeared.

That’s how I found out why I would have been killed by the Mafia if I had been elected.