Sicilian City Life
Palermitanata. It's the word we Palermitans use to describe something typical of life here in Sicily's largest city. Believe it or not, we're not making up this stuff; in Sicily life really is a little different. Entire books have been written about the challenges of life in Sicily --always interesting and often comical! But we realize that, unless you actually live here (as we do), some of these everyday experiences seem unusual, if not bizarre. As you read them, remember that these observations are not meant to be stereotypes. They're just a commentary on some of the more ironic --and often comical-- challenges of Sicilian urban life, and do not necessarily reflect everybody's experiences. If you can't come live in Sicily, Mary Taylor Simeti, Gay Marks, Peter Robb and Lara Cardella have written books about living here, and about things that Sicilians themselves rarely discuss openly with outsiders. (Some of these books are reviewed elsewhere on this site.) The Magazine also presents articles about Sicilian people and places. We don't usually link to sites without English text, but several deal with important aspects of life in Sicily, particularly those of Arcidonna, Sicily's leading women's organisation. Via Libera is an association that publishes information about organized crime, while Narco Mafie, concerns itself with the Mafia and narcotics, as does the site Mafia News. Dealing with social issues, L'Altra Sicilia often publishes information on political corruption. (Best of Sicily commends the efforts of these hardy citizens and their dedication to the people of Sicily.) For more information, visit the websites of Italy's newspapers, especially La Sicilia (Catania) and the Giornale di Sicilia (Palermo).

Invisible Sicily
Tale of Two Sicilies
Taking Care of Business
Love Reigns Supreme
Finding a Job
Miniskirt Culture
The Recommendation
The Family
Politics Left and Right
Community Service
In Cagliostro's Image
Urban Realities

Invisible Sicily
Sicily is unique but not alone. Every society (each nation, region, city and town) has its triumphs and problems. There are many Sicilies. One of the island's more interesting faces is something you will rarely see unless you actually live, love and work in Sicily. It involves many things that influence life here. Often esoteric, such experiences (politiical corruption, for example) shape Sicilian society in a thousand different ways.

The cities of Sicily boast some of the most remarkable monuments known in the Western world, and even some surprising luxuries, especially if you like to eat. There seems to be a family-run bakery, butcher shop or pastry shop on every corner. Fruit and vegetable vendors are everywhere. So are fish vendors --and the seafood they sell is fantastic. Sicilian cuisine is difficult to surpass for quality, and even in the city it isn't very expensive. The concerts and opera are superlative. And, of course, the people are nice.

But even to casual visitors, it's immediately clear that the same crowded cities are governed by a chaos you won't encounter in the country. Urban planning seems to have been completely lacking in the twentieth-century development of Sicily's larger cities --Palermo, Catania, Messina, Siracusa. Traffic is virtually uncontrolled. The British historian Denis Mack Smith observed that most of Palermo is a "concrete jungle," while American journalist Claire Sterling described vast sections of the same city as "instant high rise slums." Palermo boasts a vast royal park, the Favorita, on the edge of town beneath the slopes of Mount Pellegrino, but within the city itself there's hardly a single place for children to play on grass, despite the high costs of housing. In some ways, the situation in Catania is worse: There's Villa Bellini but little else, and nothing like Palermo's Villa Trabia, the estate that the city received from the Lanza family some years ago. It's no wonder that Sicilian city dwellers fall in love so easily with England's parks and America's natural wilderness.

Tale of Two Sicilies
Foreigners never believe it, but the differences between life in Palermo and Catania are often striking. You won't notice it unless you live here and actually compare the two cities, but Catania has a much healthier business and social climate. The city actually seems to function better than Palermo. God only knows why. Maybe it's Etna's fresh volcanic air...

Taking Care of Business
Money laundering is normal. (Almost a way of life!) Business people often request false (inflated) receipts for outsourced services, and in Palermo many retail vendors (shops) of luxury goods exist solely to launder illicit funds for third parties. It explains why there are rarely any sales or discounts!

Public building contracts are almost always assigned based on bribery and "kickbacks." A builder may underbid his competitors in return for an assurance that he will be compensated for the difference in cost; a bustarella (kickback) obviously will be paid to the politician or bureaucrat who guarantees the contract. Obviously, the Mafia is usually involved in these transactions but it's a "new" Mafia, a white-collar collaborative effort between politicians, bankers, business people and a new underworld of respectable "New Age" Yuppie Mafiosi, complete with national and European Union funding, "respectable" university-educated politicians (including both liberals and conservatives with law degrees), managers (who speak against "the Mafia") and websites. (See the Mafia page.)

Even the introduction of "anti-Mafia" certificates (yes, these really exist) for business registrations and public contracts has not reduced the scale of dishonesty and incompetence in the public sector. The "Water Fiasco of 2001" is an example. Sicilian politicians had known about our island's desertification for years, and they knew that a single seasonal drought could do more damage to the water supply than any desert wind, yet the water supply crisis was virtually ignored until it reached a critical stage, complete with water riots in Palermo. The national government provided millions in emergency aid and infrastructure development monies (for dams and water systems) which, naturally, found its way into the hands of bureaucrats and politicians.

The pizzo (Mafia "protection money") and payoffs to politicians and even minor functionaries for various building permits and business operating licenses discourages northern firms from investing in Sicily, despite substantial incentives (tax reductions, etc.) to do so. That's why the chain stores you see in Milan and Turin are rarely represented in Palermo and Catania except for a few franchised establishments operated by locals. One large Milan-based firm was "permitted" to open a large department store in central Palermo after its executive management agreed to concede all the sales clerk positions to the daughters of local politicians and bureaucrats based on "recommendations."

Here's an example you can see: In central Palermo "car parkers" (posteggiatori) are everywhere. They don't actually park your automobile; they just find a space for you and take your money. This is an illegal activity; nobody can lawfully charge you a fee to find a space for you or park your automobile on a public street, and there are parking meters in certain areas. Yet, some of these ruffians work near police stations (our favorite is the Teatro Massimo area adjacent to a large carabinieri station) because somebody has been bribed to turn a blind eye to such activity. The Mafia divides Palermo into zones of influence and pays off law-enforcement bureaucrats to refrain from enforcing the law against petty criminals in these areas. If you refuse to pay the "car parkers," you risk vandalism to your vehicle. In recent years, African immigrants have been recruited to work as car parkers because many of the Sicilians who formerly worked as car parkers now prefer to spend their time at the beach. An improvement, since our experience is that the Africans are far more courteous than the local cafoni (uncouth people) they've replaced!

Viva l'amore
Love reigns supreme. Small town young people (and not-so-young ones) seem a bit more reserved in public, but in the cities' parks and other public places there seem to be affectionate lovers everywhere. They're typically much more openly expressive than the young couples one encounters in northern Europe. Forced (for economic reasons as well as social ones) to live with parents, Italians in their twenties often lack privacy at home, part of the reason there are more cellular phones in Italy than wired ones. Romance is nothing new, but Sicilians' attitudes toward couples' public displays of affection have evolved much in the last three decades. Sometimes, though, public behavior borders on the obscene. At least that's how Palermo's civic administrators viewed the actions of the young people who habitually expressed themselves on the benches in Via Belmonte, one of the city's trendier shopping streets, which is closed to traffic. A city council member, and a few of the street's merchants, felt that love had gone too far. Their solution? Remove all the benches lining Via Belmonte. Ridiculous, certainly, but a typical Sicilian politician's response. (Comical enough, in fact, to make the national news one evening.) Perhaps the councilman should have consulted his wife --or at least his mistress-- before arriving at his decision, which didn't change much, except on that one street. In the end, the benches were replaced. Love conquers all.

Finding a Job
It's not easy. Each year, many Sicilians leave the island of their birth in search of work. Some go to northern Italy, others go abroad. London, Toronto, Sydney and New York boast large populations of immigrants who left Sicily in search of jobs or other economuc opportunities. A school teacher in Italy is paid less than a full-time minimum-wage employee in the United States. Like people everywhere, most Sicilians live in the cities out of necessity or convenience, since that's where most of the jobs, theatres, stores, hospitals and universities are. Sicily has only a very limited industrial base. Unemployment in Sicily hovers around 20 percent officially, and is actually higher; even the most qualified university graduates are fortunate when they find jobs in Sicily. It helps to have a family-run business, but not everybody has this opportunity. Creating thousands of low-paying jobs is the government's short-term answer to the problem, with programs like the Articolisti and LSU (Lavoro Socialmente Utile). But professional urban life itself is often byzantine in Sicily, where people seem to work between coffee breaks, and business is conducted in a manner more reminiscent of the medieval world than the modern one. Schedules and deadlines are rarely respected, and the promise of a job is rarely fulfilled by a prospective employer. Most employees are grossly underpaid, often hired illegally; such conditions persist because of the sinfully high unemployment level in Sicily. Incredibly, Italy has no minimum wage laws. Professionalism is often secondary to the social prestige of a certain job title. (There are exceptions, naturally; Sicily's orchestras, for example, are world class, and fields such as archeology and history are highly developed.) Women remain seriously under-represented in important positions (and underpaid), and sexual harassment is not unusual. Because well-paying, part-time work for university students is difficult to find, most young adults live with parents.

Sadly, given the difficulties in finding a job or any tangible career opportunities, Sicilian companies and publicly-controlled agencies (banks, ailines, utilities) and public administration often seem like a male geriatric society. Women, and young people (let's say under 30) in general, are seriously underrepresented except in low-paying positions. (Admittedly, it's difficult to quantify this statement except with hard statistics; Sicilian men, typically slightly overweight smokers who've rarely seen the inside of a gym, often look a lot older than American or northern-European men the same age.) Jobs are often sold for money or, depending on the politician or bureaucrat's taste (most are men over forty), exchanged for sex with an attractive young woman applying for employment. For public service jobs, civil service examinations are only a starting point; hiring decisions are usually based on external factors such as recommendations. (Don't presume that most Sicilians who've found employment in this way will discuss it with you openly.)

There's a widespread perception that absolutely anything can be bought. One reason for Italy's top-heavy military command structure could be that, at one time, higher ranks (general, colonel) in the carabinieri, army and treasury police force (Guardia di Finanza) were sold. (Yes, sold for money, with a promotion to the rank of general reportedly costing about twenty thousand dollars.) Though this scandal was finally brought under control, and the quality of military officers is improving, its effects (lots of pensions) remain. In the arts, the situation is equally bizarre. Even dancers in companies (and theatres) funded publicly are often expected to pay a kickback or bribe to the person who hires them. This includes Sicily's more important opera houses. In one such establishment, unknown local composers pay conductors to include their works in the local concert programmes. Nepotism and clientelism, like sexual harassment, are so normal that Sicilians rarely question the phenomenon.

La Cultura della Minigonna
Miniskirt Culture. One of the first things you encounter in Italian life has little to do with fashion, and it's certainly not exclusive to any particular part of Italy, though it seems more overt in Sicily. If your secretary can't type or use email, don't worry; as long as she's pretty or has shapely legs there's no problem. Accustomed to sexist attitudes in the workplace, and just about everyplace else, many young Sicilian women are understandably a bit suspicious of men's motives generally, and this is reflected in their attitudes. Such conditions are widespread enough to be considered normal --so normal, in fact, that few Sicilian women consider them to be worth so much as a second thought. That the vast majority of women who work are employed in lower-paying professions (secretaries, sales clerks) doesn't seem to bother many people. Rather few Italian women aspire to be entrepreneurs, physicians or lawyers, while many want to become fashion models, actresses, or flight attendants. As age discrimination is perfectly legal, a woman over 40 will find far fewer opportunities than one who is 25.

It all seems like something from another era, but according to Italy - Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1997, issued by the U.S. Department of State:

"Women generally receive lower salaries than men for comparable work. They are underrepresented in many fields, such as management or the professions (women, for example, account for only 25 percent of magistrates and only 10 percent of police officers). Women experience unemployment more frequently than men... While the law does not specifically prohibit sexual harassment, labor agreements covering broad sectors of the economy, in both the private and public sectors, do contain clauses that address the problem."

Attitudes toward women are reflected in many phases of Italian life. Beauty pageants, for example, are a national obsession, even at the small-town level. So commonplace are such contests that in Italian parlance the English title Miss has been weirdly corrupted to refer to any beauty contestant, as in "Quella ragazza è una miss." ("That girl is a Miss.") Unlike the Miss America Pageant, the Miss Italia contest (Italy's oldest and most famous) grants no scholarship awards and requires no talent other than cat-walking down a runway. Despite what promoters would have you believe, precious few of these girls will actually become actresses or fashion models. Sponsored by town councils and judged by men (perhaps with a token woman on the judging panel), the hundreds of local contests held each Summer lack any real scope or purpose besides deciding which girl is ostensibly the prettiest in town. Some of these young women exercise to stay in shape, but the lack of an active general interest in female athletics --even among teenagers-- is readily observed by foreigners (especially Americans and Northern Europeans) resident here in Italy.

Divorce was legalised in Italy only in the 1970s, rape became a serious crime (a violent felony) only in the late 1990s, and so-called "private" prostitution is actually legal under most conditions. (However, brothels and related activities such as the second-party promotion of prostitution are not.)

But we're not still in the Dark Ages. There is a small but growing women's movement in Sicily, which defends the rights of women in the workplace, seeks to increase female representation in politics, and supports equal rights legislation.

For most women, better education means more than a university degree or a better job. It's unfortunate when a young woman in Italy blindly assimilates the political views of her boyfriend or husband, especially when these opinions may be contrary to her own interests, but it happens often.

La Raccomandazione
The Recommendation. Scusa, ma chi è Lei? "Who do you think you are?" A prospective employer or business contact could be holding a detailed resumé in his hands and still ask such a question. This is the other pervasive aspect of Sicilian professional life --the culture of The Recommendation (preferment). Simply expressed, this means that one must be "recommended" or personally known, to establish a business relationship, obtain employment or do just about anything professionally in Sicily. The idea of professional references exists everywhere (and certainly in other parts of Italy), but in Sicilian cities it exists apart from professional qualifications and fosters all kinds of corruption. Even if you're only marginally competent, a good recommendation can get you a job as a policeman, civil service bureaucrat or manager. A competent person without the necessary recommendation will not advance in his or her career. Such a mentality lends itself to professional mediocrity, political corruption and even organized crime, but it is an essentially medieval practice that persists in Sicilian cities. Unfortunately, it has seriously retarded Sicily's economic development. Without the right recommendations, a gifted person like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs could never have established a multinational computer empire using a place like Sicily as a starting point. Not surprisingly, many talented young Sicilians choose to leave Sicily rather than spend a lifetime facing unfavorable odds. Perhaps the most appalling aspect of this phemomenon is the presence of "recommendations" in Sicilian universities. Not only are professors hired and tenured based almost entirely on recommendations, but there are occasional cases of merely average students obtaining high grades because of factors other than academic achievement. We don't wish to imply that such things as The Recommendation always occur, but they represent a distinct pattern. Think of it as "Extreme Networking."

La Famiglia
The family. It's the element of life many foreigners cite as an example of Italian virtues, especially in Italy's South, and it's as important in the city as in the country. But can people be too close for comfort? Sicilian children typically live with their parents well into adulthood, usually until marriage. It's quite normal to meet a thirty or forty year-old adult who has never lived apart from his or her parents except for a few months away while studying or traveling. The road to personal independence is not an easy one in Italy; finding a job that pays well enough to permit a young adult to defray the cost of an apartment is extremely difficult. Even young mothers seem very dependent on their own mothers. This extreme dependence on the family is often a limiting force. Something's missing. Foreigners sometimes criticise Italians for being noticeably materialistic, superficial or hedonistic. Even in wealthier Sicilian families, little value is placed on cultivating a child's talents; the visual arts, music and dance are absent from the experience of most Sicilian children. Piano lessons and ballet classes are a rarity. High schools rarely sponsor drama, music or sport programs. There seem to be plenty of summertime beauty contests for teenage girls. Unlike American teenagers, Italians are rarely encouraged to take on small after-school jobs (like babysitting). Marital life is a subject in itself.

Politics Left and Right
In another era, Dante found Italian politics comical. Unless you're looking for amusement, you don't deserve to be bored with a discussion of politics in Sicily or in Italy (nationally), so we'll stick to a few generalities. Most Sicilians are politically center-right (conservative) or center-left (liberal), but there's little philosophy involved; the parties argue over issues like taxes, jobs and public spending. Extreme leftists (Communists) and right-wing yahoos (Neo-Fascists) are a minority of the population, but the effects (strikes, corruption) of their squabbles have taken a toll on Sicilian society. High schools and universities are politicized, with extremist teachers attempting to influence students. In certain quarters there are more Communists, but in others there are more conservatives (who may be members of the Catholic organisation Opus Dei). University professors are often hired or tenured based as much on their extremist politics as their scholarship. Even the young (teenagers) often entertain bizarre views of global politics.

As we've mentioned elsewhere, a century of indoctrination has left many Italians woefully ignorant about Fascism and other aspects of Italian history, while some are obsessed with what they view as the social ills of other nations (the death penalty in the United States is a favorite complaint).

The Burning House
Though they enjoy superficial conversation, some Sicilians seem to lack a well-developed sense of community service. Sadly, active volunteerism is still exceptional in Italy. There's an old Sicilian saying, "If your neighbor's house is on fire, fetch water to save your own." By September 2001, little had changed except the shape of the "house." Interviewed by Italian television, a prominent Sicilian employee of the Italian Food and Wine Institute graphically described the agony of burn victims in the World Trade Center attacks, but in his self-preservation made no effort to help anybody during his rapid descent down some 80 floors to safety. (Being closely related to a politician from the Palermo area, the man is fairly well-known.) Few older Sicilians thought his lack of altruism exceptional, but most younger Sicilians certainly do not share the mentality of this middle-aged bureaucrat. By some unflattering accounts, Italian society is one of the world's more materialistic, and the allegation is difficult to refute. Most Italians seem obsessively concerned with their own families, houses, cars and clothes, while giving little serious overt consideration to the needs of others. Fortunately, this is gradually changing. Italians' support of relief projects during the Kosovo crisis was remarkable, and at home more young people are getting involved with worthy charities whose fundraising programmes are based on the Anglo-American model. A few of Italy's younger school teachers are beginning to impress upon students the need for altruism. The neighbor's house might still be saved.

In Cagliostro's Image
A legend in his own time (and in his own mind), the so-called "Count" of Cagliostro was an eighteenth century charlatan and imposter born in Palermo whose adventures created a pan-European scandal. Unknowingly, some of today's Sicilians follow the example of this eccentric adventurer by inadvertently misrepresenting themselves, their intentions or talents in various fields of endeavour, especially where controls are minimal. (This idle boasting could almost make you believe that yes, Signora Siciliana's son really did walk on the moon!) Hence an inordinate number of Sicilians are "advertising experts" or "international business consultants" despite having little genuine experience in their chosen pursuits. An office, a computer, a secretary, and perhaps a few well-connected political friends (for public contracts), are the only requisites for apparent success in such activities. In several infamous cases, "experts" with questionable credentials have obtained millions in European Commission funding for "development" projects, complete with self-promotional press conferences and even web sites, while pocketing enough in "consulting fees" to purchase yachts and vacation homes. In fields such as medicine and law, where real credentials are a necessity, this charming phenomenon takes another form: The local lawyer specialised in prosaic traffic cases becomes an "international expert" in human rights, making ebullient trips (at her own expense) to the United States to voice opposition to American social ills; the leftist businessman flies off to Turkey for a few days to express "solidarity" with "his" Kurds in an activity so widespread that a term has been coined to describe it ("disaster tourism"). Such eccentricity has spawned a plethora of Sicilian-based "international organisations." Prepared to save the world even as rampant unemployment and organised crime erode the fabric of society at home in Sicily, they bear such grandiose names as the "International Parliament for Safety and Peace" (Palermo) and the "World Federation of Scientists" (Erice). Meanwhile, fiscal unaccountability permits Sicilian politicians to spend public funds for travel to exotic locales in countries whose impoverished economies could not possibly support trade with Sicily; thus a mayor or councilman becomes an "international trade expert." In such an environment, urban Sicilians must be forgiven their natural suspicion of diceria (idle talk) and vanteria (boasting). And the elected politicians? From their speeches, you would think that the President of the Sicilian Region or the Mayor of Palermo were United Nations Secretary General or at least President of the United States! In fairness, it must be said that Sicily's modern-day Cagliostros rarely intend to deceive. In their own minds at least, some really are what they claim to be. As one Sicilian politician observed, "There's a little Cagliostro in every Palermitan."

Urban Realities
There are more obvious urban realities, of course. Things that influence the quality of life in any city. Public services. Labor relations. Street crime. Air quality. But it's interesting that just a few social habits have so greatly permeated every aspect of life in Sicilian cities, sometimes with bizarre results --even on young people. Due to "recommended" doctors, medical malpractice is rampant in Sicily, and almost impossible to prosecute under Italian law. In many cases, the less competent have "earned" credentials and "professional" positions, but the calibre of professionalism in most fields has suffered --English teachers who can't speak English, computer programmers who've never written a program, lawyers who don't know law, marketing consultants who know nothing about selling. A Sicilian firm might advertise job positions already knowing who will get the positions. In the private sector, employees are routinely exploited, being paid low wages without pension benefits. Public contracts (everything from building projects to the purchase of office furniture) are awarded to politicians' friends or cousins. In most localities, the Mafia controls entire sectors of the public economy --buying politicians, extracting protection money, and winning public construction, agricultural and development contracts. The presumed participation of the Mafia in construction of the proposed bridge across the Strait of Messina has sparked a national debate; the illegal granting of construction permits for houses in Agrigento's Valley of the Temples (a protected park) was a national scandal. Public administration is not efficient by any means. The professionalism, morality and dedication of some hardy Sicilians defy these generalities. These worthy citizens are part of an elite minority whose efforts are rarely recognised.

At the very least, life in a Sicilian city is a fascinating experience. But to Sicilians it's all quite normal.