“I hope he’s not elected, so he doesn’t do damage at the European level, too,” agreed Paolo Collucio, a diminutive pensioner with bright blue eyes. “I’m not racist — you can be black, white, or yellow, I don’t care. But he took all of those funds and did nothing — from morning to evening.”
For the most part, these residents will be voting for the current mayor, Triffoli, who succeeded Lucano almost immediately after the latter was charged in 2018. Over the past five years, Triffoli has largely abandoned the idea of repopulating the town with migrants, and has overseen its decline to a handful of people. Ironically, or tragically, Triffoli was a schoolmate of Lucano’s and claims to have helped set up the Global Village in 2004. “It was a beautiful idea, but it was impossible to sustain,” he said. “There was a period in which there were 500 new people — and we are 2,000 overall.”
Instead, his platform, if you can call it that at this scale, focuses on concerns that he describes as less “ideological” than those championed at the EU level.
Unlike Lucano’s supporters, Triffoli’s supporters largely dismiss the EU (and by implication the June 6 European election) and still, the practical concerns he champions depend almost entirely on funding from the European Commission.
Indeed, the best way to boost Riace’s economy, he said, is to make use of money from the EU’s post-pandemic Next Generation EU fund, a portion of which he has earmarked for a series of Brussels-approved improvements to the town’s tourist infrastructure and digital services.
He described plans to introduce, among other things, co-working spaces, a minibus, and cultural events that emphasize the town’s history. “It needs an essentially touristic development,” he said.
But at least for those old regulars at the cafe back on the hilltop of Riace Superiore, where the long days wear on, there is still a better way forward. “There was life, and joy, and commerce,” one old-timer said wistfully of the Lucano era, chomping on a seemingly endless cigarette as a cool sea breeze blew in from the distant Marina.
“A town full of foreigners,” he said, “is better than one that’s dead.”
