I could not believe my eyes on Christmas morning, just arrived in Catania.
I left a cold Milan which was licking the wounds after the chaos created by the snowfall few days earlier and I found a warm city that had only frozen calendar impressed with the date of September the 25th.
I had promised myself not to come back for a while. Terrible year 2009 for me and my family, too many memories ... to forget soon. But my sly Catania, was always there waiting for me as beautiful and passionate lover who unsuccessfully you try to eliminate from your life.
Beautiful despite everything, despite 20 years of mismanagement, contempt of merciless livability rankings that are too long the only dispute the primacy of the worst cities in Italy for the quality of life.
The day I come back to Milan, after my Christmas holidays, at dawn I watched with longing and hope, along the road to the airport, passing the beautiful fishing village of Ognina witnessed the most important moments of my life, from birth to marriage with the woman I love.
Fire and the sea, the harshness of black lava and the green hills surrounded by golden colors of orange and wheat fields of the plain. Everything here is made of strong contrasts and excesses. We left behind the figure so majestic of the Etna Volcano just whitewashed and a beautiful sea. Then I was forced to endure the image of the waterfront full of dry bushes, the work remains by the red palm weevil and unrecognizable Europa square devastated not by insects, but the speculation-building policies of those who has no consciousness and a bit of love for my homeland.
I was wondering, fantasizing, what if I had an unlimited budget to make this city a paradise on earth?
I saw the extraordinary artistic and natural beauty, the industry of its citizens who were able to rebuild it and make it nine times. The same city that was compared in the 60s as dynamism and economic outlook to the "moral" capital of Italy, my current town, Milano.
I imagined a renovated old town with the churches of Crociferi Street and Piazza Dante returned to their former glory. Bellini park that rivaled against the best gardens in the world and a university of excellence, among the oldest in the country, able to attract the best brains in the Mediterranean for meeting the challenges of the future.
I dreamed of a prosperous, made of small and large companies, capable of clear social disadvantage and restore dignity to the inhabitants of disadvantaged neighborhoods and a football team that played in a modern stadium, where could be possible even win the serie A league ...
Unfortunately I have not an unlimited budget, but not enough to resign myself to see it treated that way. Wistful? Maybe ... but I wonder how valuable the minds and energies of men of goodwill who despite everything still love Catania?
As a great journalist murdured by mafia called Giuseppe Fava said once "what good is living, if there is not the courage to fight?
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