The Pietà of Sala in front of a city without heirs and without courage

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It's Beppe Sala's "Pietà," pain on a panel: it looks like Bellini's Christ in Brera. He remains mayor because "my hands are clean," "I want to continue in office," "I've faced things a hundred times more serious," but he's transfigured, with the face of Christ on the cross, the man at the pillar when, with an open heart, he reveals that "the investigation is a source of enormous suffering. They won't be able to destabilize me." He doesn't resign, but his councilor for urban planning, Giancarlo Tancredi, does. He remains mayor ("yes, I thought about leaving, but my father is watching me") but warns the Democratic Party: "If the majority is there, I'm here, with all my desire and passion." There's a guillotine smell, Palazzo Marino invaded, cameras, Tg1, Tg2, Tg3, Sky Tg 24, live broadcasts. There's a smell of filth in the air and we're back to dreaming of coins and Turkish toilets, a vertical prison in place of Stefano Boeri's forest.

A model of Italy, of development, acclaimed and envied around the world, collapses on a sunny, 80-degree July afternoon, amid the indifference of the city, except for the Marxists, Potere al Popolo, with their posters reading "Sala go away!" because even the crucifixion has free Wi-Fi here. It collapses under the vulgarity and crudeness of a city councilor from the Italian League of Independent States, Enrico Marcora, who imagines Sala wearing his prisoner's pajamas (he defends himself in the council by saying, "Mine was just satire"). This Marcora should make Giorgia Meloni blush with shame, and from what Sala says, he did make her blush because, the mayor says, "I reported his actions to the leaders of his party, to the Prime Minister and the Senate." It's not Paolo Brosio from the Palace of Justice, but the editor of Libero, Mario Sechi, who recalls his last time in this cramped City Council chamber: "It was about Tangentopoli." The noose hasn't been displayed yet, that of the Northern League's Leoni Orsenigo, but there is the League's deputy secretary, Silvia Sardone, MEP and city councilor, who tells Il Foglio: "It's the Democratic Party that's using Sala as a scapegoat. The mayor won't budge because he hasn't found another one yet. He's bringing the city to its knees." This councilor, the "technician," Tancredi, is paying the price. He's embraced before the meeting, and he too will repeat, "clean," like Sala: "My conscience is clear, and I hope this gesture will help bring greater serenity." They sacrifice him like a lamb, and you can almost hear Aldo Moro when he asks in the Council: "It will be interesting to see how urban planning will change in Milan without the scapegoat." They burn witches, or probably innocents, while drinking Negronis. It's not 1992, and the "smoking gun" hasn't been handed down yet, but there are 74 people under investigation, already convicted by the street. There's no banknote, which is Italian eroticism, but rather a mad desire to "clean up," a word wielded by the left and right in reverse. Alessandro Capelli, secretary of the Milan Democratic Party, destined to shoulder Sala, as Aeneas shouldered Anchises, says, "Nobody wants Tancredi's job. They're all afraid. Now the choice will be important. But we'll make it." They've run out of money. (continued in insert III) We've arrived at green in every sense, even with imagination, hope, and it's not urban greenery, the green of plants. The Milanese (but which ones? Those on Rete 4 talk shows?) now want green, a military greenery, against the maranza, because it's not true that green brings good luck. Indeed, as scholar Michel Pastoureau wrote, "green is always associated with everything that doesn't last, everything that changes: love, good luck, gambling. Green is a chemically unstable color." A mayor who has been a candidate for everything, even leading a government, must appear in the Chamber on trial by these councilors, "Comazzi," "Truppi," who unleash the bile of a lifetime, repudiating Milan (which is also the city of mayors Albertini and Moratti), the Milan that MIT professor Carlo Ratti declared: "It has been reborn. Milan doesn't have to apologize." Sechi, tirelessly with his notebook and pen, says, "I remember Milan. There was a time when all of us journalists wanted to escape, but now it's the city we all want to return to. More than Sala's fate, I'm interested in the transformation the Democratic Party wants to bring to the city." For the Democratic Party, there are Senator Simona Malpezzi, who puts her face on the line, "Beppe doesn't have to defend himself from anything," Ivan Scalfarotto of Italia Viva, Silvia Roggiani, secretary of the Democratic Party in Lombardy, and also in the stands the president of the first municipality, Mattia Abdu, who urges Sala to continue, to "finish his program." For the right, it's the Democratic Party's claque, and for the Democratic Party, says Capelli, "it's proof that the mayor has our support, but a new project is needed because the needs have evolved." Needs or fury? No one had ever seen Sala so distraught; no one had ever heard him say: "These are confusing days, where certainties are wavering and the most familiar features are blurred." He was the mayor who defeated cancer, the records, before the notice of investigation he didn't receive, but "learned about from the newspapers," prompting him to ask: "I don't intend to pass judgment on the judiciary's actions, but I can't help but tell my version. I remind those who publicly take advantage of my situation that today it's me, tomorrow it's you." He speaks for over thirty minutes, interrupted by Marcora, the minor Orsenigo of the FdI, and wears a burgundy tie, the red of bubbles, the color of fists in the air. He is shocked but precise when he begins his defense and assures: "Everything I have done during my two terms as mayor, for which I had the burden and honor, has always been based exclusively on the interests of the citizens. There is not a single action that can be attributed to my advantage." Forty-four councilors watch him die, paying homage to the father who taught them, "Do what you want in life, but remember that I'll be watching you and wanting to make sure you're doing your duty to the fullest." He's accused of "false statements," "undue inducement to give and promise benefits" for the so-called Pirellino, the sale, and then the auction, but Sala explains: "We made a change, requiring the new developer to reserve at least 40 percent of the living space for social housing, but the developer appealed." He then continues, listing the multitude of rulings: "The Regional Administrative Court deemed our change correct, but the Council of State subsequently overturned it, noting that the municipality had failed to take legitimate expectations into account. My story illustrates how far the municipality has gone in favor of the public interest." They're telling the municipality that the next councilor could be Franco Gabrielli, a policeman, someone who "can communicate with the prosecutor's office," otherwise the sale of San Siro will fall through.

Sala is right when he asks: "Are we afraid of Milan's verticalization? I think it's wrong to be afraid of it." They've already submitted to the need to ask permission, in advance, from magistrates; the joy is gone, the idea that industriousness can overcome indolence, the "forget it, they'll investigate you later" attitude. Democratic Party councilor Beatrice Uguccioni says in the Chamber: "Remember men like Filippo Penati and Pietro Tatarella, investigated and with their lives turned upside down, and then acquitted." Sala? He should be blamed for not having built it. Only one tower is missing in Milan: the Horizontal Forest of crippled politicians.

Carmelo Caruso

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