[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_67

Story of justice, injustice and prison, Bianca Guidetti Serra, 1944 – 1992

“I liked doing, and I did what I could, always trying to be myself” are the words of Bianca Guidetti Serra, also known as “the lawyer of the weak,” one of the first female Italian criminal lawyers in the post-war period. “I have never felt antagonistic on principle," she said. When I fought against someone, it was to defend someone else. “

“Stories of Justice, injustice and Prison” focuses on the themes that continue to question Italian History, from the partisan resistance to its “abuse drifts.” The book contains notes from the trial of Emanuele Artom's torturers, the defense of the Cavallero Gang, the confrontation with the women accused of terrorism, and finally, Guidetti Serra’s radical criticism of life imprisonment, spanning 50 years of dark History of the Republic.

It is curious to note how imposing the figure of Guidetti Serra is and how unfamiliar her name remains to almost all Italians. Every time I am asked about Italy and what life is like there, I think of women like her, invisible giants.

In recent times, I have often heard many Italians who live abroad miss Italy. And it has sounded to me a form of idealization rather than nostalgia: "Italy is beautiful," they tell me. "It's good in Italy, " it's sunny, " you eat well." When I ask them why they don’t go back, they reply, "Here there's more money/ here there's work/ if I went back to Italy, I wouldn't know what to do." From their answers, it seems like they want to come back but can't.

I've noticed that even when you come back to Italy, and residents ask you what life is like abroad, they expect the same answers: "Well, you know, it's not easy, but you can adapt to it," "Life is better in Italy." I don't give these answers. I can't because the truth is that I couldn’t live well in Italy.

I couldn’t live well there because my academic background was useless, and either I was overqualified or I didn't have the proper recommendations for the job I wanted. Because, in Italy, if you don't know the "right people," you don't get very far. According to 2024 Eurostat data, only 67.5% of people aged 20 to 34 find a job in Italy within three years of graduation; irregular workers are 13%. It is impossible to define that the percentage has partially regular contracts. I couldn't live well there because I wouldn’t even have a regular rental contract if I couldn't find a regular job. That’s why I moved house every year and was always broke.

I couldn't live well there because being a teacher in Italy is a humiliating job based on a collapsing system that treats people like pieces of cloth to patch holes. The State uses an algorithm to assign jobs: the algorithm is wrong, and the State knows it but continues to use it. So, unqualified people get jobs, and those waiting for a teaching job lose the possibility of working.

I couldn’t live well there because even the healthcare system is collapsing. If you have an autoimmune disease with periodic checks and lifelong medications, you're better off lighting a candle for the Madonna rather than relying on doctors. I couldn't live well there because Italy is a country that gives the right to abortion but aborts the careers of the doctors who practice it, which is why 65% of Italian gynecologists are conscientious objectors, together with 45% of anesthetists and the 37% of non-medical staff (Report from the Italian Ministry of Health, 2022).

I couldn't live well there because, even though Italy is very sunny and the climate is mild, I used to live in the Po Valley, which has one of the highest levels of fine dust in Europe. I had asthma every day, and it is no coincidence that the peak of death from COVID-19 occurred there.

I couldn't live well there because Italy is called the “Bel Paese,” but it is only for tourists or those withmoney. Tourism has a two-headed face: if, on the one hand, it offers jobs in catering and hotel services (among the lowest salaries in Italy, according to ISTAT data from 2023), on the other, it gentrifies the neighborhoods, raising property prices, and pushes residents outside city centers, looking for cheaper and more sustainable places to live. In fifty years, Venice has lost 70% of its residents.

I couldn’t live well there because the entire Italian television is so uniformly sexist that it doesn't seem sexist: because when sexism is the standard, it stops being sexist, and it becomes normality. I couldn't live well there because cars honked at me every time I walked down the street alone, and men whistled at me, shouting their "compliments." I couldn't live well there because every time I went into a restaurant alone, I was asked why I was alone. When you're an unmarried woman, and you move alone in public places, without the company of a man or friends, it's strange, and people need to understand what's wrong with you. I couldn't live well there because History is treated with velvet gloves only when it serves to celebrate the "glories" of Italy. Still, it is swept under the carpet when it tells of war crimes, colonialism, and all the civil massacres that tore the country apart. The History taught in schools and shown on TV is always partial and consistently conservative.

I couldn't live well there because Culture costs dearly: Universities are expensive and of terrible quality. Museums are not free, and access to cultural content is not made attractive for a large-scale public but becomes a niche living room for intellectuals. I couldn't live well there. The quality of information and journalism is very low because people don't do politics but gossip because there is no space for international approaches but only for crime news because not even the crime news, with a femicide every two days (Istat data 2024) encourages reflection but only sterile polemics; because politicians run their campaigns on people's fears and suffering. I didn’t live well there because it is not true that fascism has returned; fascism has never gone away.

I wonder what reasons pushed 652 thousand of Italians to move abroad in the last four years, and I wonder what answers the 6.134.000 Italians who now live abroad give when asked what life is like outside Italy.

It takes a lot of courage to stay and fight, as Bianca Guidetti Serra did for a lifetime.