By DAVID GRINSFELDER | Contributing Writer
It’s 7:30 p.m. on a bustling Saturday evening in Navigli and the topic of discussion for tonight’s apertivo is the north/south divide in Italy.
Vittorio, who hails from the industrial northern capital of Milan, has been single-handedly debating three Sicilian friends who flatly refused to acknowledge that northern Italy is in any way superior to the southern part of the country. The rest of us howled with laughter as Vittorio worked himself into hysterics, eventually retreating to the bar to order another beer.
Different regions within Italy are renowned for touting themselves as the best or most quintessentially Italian. Of course, people in other countries share a similar affinity for distinguishing themselves based on local food, traditions and manners of speech.
But while these latitudinal differences are a source of harmless humor and occasional regional peacocking, in Italy, there are often a source of more serious contention.
Italy’s long-standing north/south divide is far more pronounced than in its European neighbors. The divergence dates back to 1816, when the south was ruled by a sovereign state known as the “Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.”
Overwhelmingly agrarian, its identity was carved in opposition to repeated attempts at its conquest by the northern Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. The downfall of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1861 and its subsequent annexation by northern Italy led to a complete collapse of the south’s industry.
On the contrary, northern Italy was, from its initial settlement, a hub of industrial innovation that fostered a strong economy. Its superior economic status caused increasing tensions with the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies for nearly 50 years prior to unification in 1861. After the Italian peninsula united, the north continued to treat the south as a barbaric region in need of state intervention.
To make matters worse, in the decades after unification, the southern economy only worsened, leading to massive emigration and an Italian diaspora from the mezzogiorno region (a microregion of Italy consisting of its southern regions: Abruzzi, Molise, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia).
Issues like high rates of poverty, a resurgence in organized crime and chronic underinvestment in infrastructure went unaddressed, which fueled further relocation to industrial northern cities, like Genoa, Milan and Turin.
In the 21st century, outright political and cultural hostility between Italy’s northern and southern regions has subsided. Italy’s economy, however, is more geographically divided than any other country in Europe: Northern Italy has GDP per capita equal to 127% of the EU average, while the GDP of Calabria, in the south, is only 56% of the EU average, according to Eurostat in 2021.
So, if you’re looking for a concise answer to explain the north/south divide in Italy, it really boils down to the uneven advantages enjoyed by northern Italy in both agriculture and industry.
In daily life, the most prevalent manifestation of this north/south divide are in the small jokes and barbs that people will toss at one another.
Despite these vestiges of Italy’s north/south divide, the country’s population is much more intertwined today than in any previous era. There is strong seasonal movement and migration between north and south Italy, and as the COVID-19 pandemic continued, the direction of migration actually reversed, as it completely shut down cities.
But Italians will never totally lose their sense of campanilismo (neighborhood pride), with many still referring to themselves as Sicilians, Neapolitans, Venetians and Florentines.
David Grinsfelder is a graduate of Palisades Charter High School (2015) and UC Berkeley (2019). He currently lives in New York and Milan, Italy, working as a model and writing a series of travel stories for the Palisadian-Post. The Grinsfelders have been Highlands residents since 1989.
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