Sicily is about to deal the death blow to an agonizing heritage. The new decree on cultural heritage

"I am convinced that the devolution of cultural heritage and landscape to the Region of Sicily was a bad idea, contrary to the Constitution. Everything that followed is the consequence of that ill-fated decision in 1975. I will study this ddl carefully." In these few lapidary words, Salvatore Settis condenses the crystal-clear and powerful conviction of the harm done to Sicily’s cultural heritage by the state’s recognition of the exclusive competence in cultural heritage, which it also enjoys among those with a special statute. The latest act is marked by a bill, under consideration in the ARS (the Sicilian parliament), that mortifies the Superintendencies and twists the rules on landscape plans.

We had submitted it to Settis at the end of February. Within a few days the country would plunge into an unprecedented health emergency. Hence the decision to “freeze” this article at a time when all media attention was focused on covid-19.

We return, therefore, to talk about it today that Sicily, which came out of the lockdown with the lowest infection rate in the country, is facing another emergency, which even risks making more “victims” of the coronavirus among the regional cultural and landscape heritage assets: ddl 698-500, on the surface, intends to regulate “the actions of the Region in the field of the enhancement of cultural heritage and landscape protection,” in substance, however, it is an attempt at legislative reform stemming from a substantial illiteracy not only of national sector regulations, but also of regional ones, which aims to deprive the superintendencies of authority and put landscape protection out of play.

Not a law aimed at regulating individual sectors (museums, ecomuseums, archaeological parks, etc.), as in the past, but a large-scale regulatory reform, which as a precedent has only the one that had allowed Sicily to build the lintel of a protection “parallel” to that of the state through the far-sighted and fundamental Laws No. 80/1977 and No. 116/1980.

An arrow strung in the bow and never let off, that of exclusive jurisdiction over cultural heritage is the story of almost half a century of premises and promises that were not able and willing to be developed in their not infrequently innovative charge. Still, we are not so certain, however, that even if autonomy were abrogated, Sicily would suddenly find itself with a better political class.

One only has to read the 56 articles of this absurd and unconstitutional bill, presented by deputies from all sides (with the sole exception of the 5S and Claudio Fava, leader of the Cento Passi per la Sicilia movement, who has withdrawn his signature), to have some doubts about it. The first signatory is Luca Sammartino (Italia Viva), chairman of the same Culture Commission. Evidently the pulse of the mounting impatience of those who work in the Sicilian cultural heritage system, or even just gravitate around it, has been missed. In fact, the bitter criticism of associations in defense of cultural heritage and landscape, the Orders of Architects, university professors, as well as regional superintendents and museum directors, was not long in coming. All are demanding the same thing: that the bill be withdrawn, and not just patched up with an impressive number of amendments (nearly 500).

Temple E of Selinunte

The critical issues of cultural heritage in Sicily

A bad piece of legislation, in short, incapable of addressing the complexity of the problems that risk in the short term to paralyze the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, which is suffering from a human capital reduced to an “Indian reserve,” while massive retirements are taking place, with no provision for turnover. The mortification of specialized skills reigns, in favor of generic figures that weaken or even contradict the mission of each institute, such as a geologist in charge of an Archaeological Heritage Unit of a Superintendency or an architect in charge of an Archaeological Park. We are also talking about the chronic lack of financial resources; the weakening of protection action due to an incongruous reorganization of the Superintendencies; the irrational spending contraction measures, bequeathed by the previous government, which do not make a dent in waste but paralyze the offices, which are already short of equipment, technological means, fast internet connections, etc.; and the failure to revise and update regulations in order to make them more efficient.; of the failure to revise and update sector regulations, which is quite different from the botched attempt proposed by this bill. And again, of the policy of lending works of art that more than an autonomous region makes Sicily a colony of international museums; of the need to accelerate and complete landscape planning. But also of the need to create and implement inter-departmental coordination, because cultural policies can only have a systemic scope, and cultural heritage should always be connected in a unified project framework, intersected with the programmatic orientations of other policies (infrastructure, planning, public works, environmental protection, tourism, training and economy, because every cultural policy implies an economic policy). Finally, it sounds like a technicality and, instead, it is the key to it all: we need to implement and systematize the three existing databases (those created by Cricd and Crpr, along with those produced in the drafting of the Landscape Spatial Plans). Because knowledge of the consistency of heritage is a prerequisite for any action, from its study to conservation to enhancement. And the list is still by default.

View of Noto

The critical voices that reject the bill

Instead of all this, what do we read in this bill? The delegation to municipalities of the granting of landscape permits, contrary to the Code. To Entities, that is, unable to ensure an adequate level of technical and scientific expertise.

Also evident is an attempt to centralize everything in the hands of the general manager (dg) of the Department of Cultural Heritage, a figure, as is well known, strongly conditioned by excessive proximity to politics. To the latter would like to devolve the authorization of interventions on cultural heritage that the Code recognizes only to the Superintendencies. Depriving the latter also of the tasks of conservation, study and restoration, transferred, observes the CIA, Confederazione Italiana Archeologi, to the Regional Planning and Restoration Center. To which Center, we add, already the DA No. 6 of January 29, 2019, which regulates the procedures for loan authorizations of regional cultural property, assigns the expression of the opinion on the state of conservation of the property, instead of the superintendencies.

The CIA also raises doubts on the method, as well as on the merits: the legislative competence of the Sicilian Region in the matter made to derive directly from the Statute, instead of from the 1975 Presidential proxy decrees; and the failure to refer to the fundamental laws of 1977 and 1980 mentioned above. On the merits, he observes, among other things, that "Article 7 of the bill assigns the protection of cultural and landscape heritage to agreements between administrations, bypassing the technical-scientific role of the protection institutions." Going, moreover, in the same direction as a recent regional law: the Armao-Grasso law (“Provisions for administrative procedures and functionalities of administrative action,” implementing the 2015 Madia Law), which stipulates that if “aregional or local administration in the field of environmental protection, landscape-territorial, historical-artistic heritage” (e.g., a Superintendency) expresses dissent at the services conference against a project, an opposition can be brought before the Council. In other words, a kind of final judgment by the political body is introduced.

On the Superintendencies, Legambiente, does not mince words in acknowledging that "they have not always fulfilled their task to the best of their ability, having almost always suffered meddling by politics and lobbies [...] However, and this has been found with the landscape plans, they have been a curb on looting and predation. In that sense, they have been seen as laces to private initiatives.“ That is why he hopes they will indeed be ”reformed, making them more autonomous and free from the conditioning of politics." And endowed with more "human and financial resources ."

Of debasement of the superintendencies also speaks the “cartel” of the no to the bill that unites, in addition to Legambiente itself, the Sicilian Forum of Movements for Water and Common Goods Zero Waste Sicilia, WWF Sicilia Italia Nostra Sicilia; Comitato Rodotà Beni Pubblici and Comuni Sicilia Centro Consumatori Italia: “behind the screen of the streamlining of bureaucracy,” they denounce “the practice that favors the path of appointments of a fiduciary-derived nature, rather than strengthening qualified staff.”

For SiciliAntica, the bill completely sidesteps central issues: " respect for technical expertise in the entrusting of managerial positions within conservation bodies constitutes the indispensable premise for any action that wants to promote research, enhancement and management activities of a vast and widespread cultural and environmental heritage."

The Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli Association and Italia Nostra have signed a joint document in which they point out that the bill contains "norms that conflict with national protection legislation that implements the constitutional dictate of Article 9.“ So much for the implementation of the Code. The aim to ”free“ land use planning from the protection constraints dictated by the Constitution and make it subject to speculative interests.” And then, "the crisis of the regional system of protection is highlighted in all its severity today in the comparison with the current national system that has taken as a model precisely the Sicilian Single Superintendencies for a reform of the peripheral structures of the MiBACT, with the declared aim of achieving a multidisciplinary and contextual protection of the cultural heritage of the Nation. The holistic protection of the cultural heritage, the declared objective of the innovative regional legislation, produced forty years ago well in advance with the national legislative framework, is, today, precisely in Sicily, impossible to achieve by the superintendencies because of the organizational chaos produced by successive laws and administrative acts that have destroyed the multidisciplinary structure of the Sicilian Institutes of Protection."

Gross overlaps between regional and state competencies, a telltale sign of the haste with which the regulatory text was drafted, were highlighted by ANAI, the Italian National Archival Association, which recalls that the Archival Superintendency of Sicily is a “fossil” of the state superintendencies present in the region before the transfer of competencies in 1975: “the only state superintendency on the regional territory,” it cannot be hierarchically framed within the Region’s administrative structure, let alone be overruled by the dg in matters of authorizations concerning archives.

Softer, finally, is the position of the ANA, National Association of Archaeologists, which considers the bill “supplementary” to the Code, proposing, however, a series of timely amendments. Such as those to consider the contribution of volunteers as a resource not “supplementary,” but “auxiliary” to professionals; or to refer to the superintendent, and not to the dg, the authorization on any intervention on cultural heritage.

The Cathedral of Palermo

Sicily, from “political laboratory” to “legislative laboratory”

Sicily, already a “political laboratory” of experiences to be then transferred to the national level, thus also becomes a “legislative laboratory” of laws that, not yet passed, are already taking root elsewhere. In Florence, for example. Where Mayor Dario Nardella has asked the government that in the simplification decree the mayors of cities of art be given the possibility of overcoming constraints on historic-artistic heritage. “To move a small wall,” he said, “I need authorizations from the superintendencies. To redo a facade I need a landscape permit.”

It is not too surprising about this alignment right here of the with the most discussed passage of the renzian Sammartino’s ddl: like other Tuscan PD members, Nardella grew up politically in renzism. We are also no longer satisfied with the silence-consent introduced by the Madia Law of PA Reform (L. 124/2015) in proceedings concerning cultural and landscape heritage, on which the superintendencies express their opinion. Mechanism not implemented, it must be said (sometimes autonomy does not equal pains...), by the recent Sicilian Armao-Grasso law on “unbureaucratization.”

How to reform superintendencies

The economy cannot be held hostage to inefficiency! True, but superintendents are not agents with a license to block development. They must be put in a position to respond within the timeframe whether it is a private party or Mayor Nardella.

How, let’s go back to the Sicilian superintendencies under siege. First, by taking technical expertise into account, instead of making assignments regardless of it. By evaluating the real weight of curricula, drugged instead by decades of appointments obtained by guaranteeing loyalty to the politician of the day rather than to Article 9 of the Constitution. A machine that is fed in a circular fashion: titles and appointments are stacked up with which to inflate curricula to be spent to obtain new appointments. Who would ever get heart surgery from a dentist? Why, then, should an agronomist be the one to comment on the demolition of a historic building? Second, by restoring individual operational units against the incongruous amalgamations of certain sectoral areas desired by the Crocetta government, whereby architectural assets are paired with historical-artistic assets and landscape assets with demo-ethno-anthropological assets. This is not just a misplaced issue of spending-review, but of historical misrepresentation of the model of the Sicilian superintendency: organized in a team with multidisciplinary expertise, it cannot effectively ensure the performance of its institutional tasks unless the sectoral areas are kept distinct and the appropriate specialist is ensured for each operational unit. Third, by going back to hiring: in a few years, there will be no more managers. Fourth, by sprinkling the chapter dedicated to the expenses of the operation of the superintendencies that would guarantee “basic necessities” such as ink and paper for printers, fast internet lines, allowing opinions to be expressed in minutes, rather than three months. Fifth, there is a need to speed up the process of dematerialization and computerization of acts, by providing the offices with adequate technological resources and introducing computerized protocol, with which only a few are equipped; and to encourage the exchange of information with other public bodies according to online procedures: for example, being able to carry out cadastral searches at the Internal Revenue Service or consult the civil registry at municipalities. It would serve to speed up the time it takes to complete procedures and provide a better service to users, who should be able to access services online to request permits, information, etc. Finally, dare to beat new paths. Such as that of providing partial financial autonomy. For example, the superintendencies could retain percentages on the compensatory allowances paid by abusers for landscaping upgrades. True “treasuries,” they are currently paid into a regional chapter without anything returning to the superintendency that obtained them.

But the truth is that the superintendencies do not want to be put in a position to answer to mayors Nardella. Sammartino’s “provocation” (that is precisely the term he used to try to minimize it) is not yet law, but it is likely to become law in a short turn.

The Greek Theater in Taormina

The Palermo conference to say no to the ddl.

It is because of this, because it risks becoming law in Sicily as a “provocation,” that the writer promoted an open discussion table that brought together a united front to say no.

The conference is being held today, June 11, at the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa in Palermo. Speakers include ANA, Associazione Nazionale Archeologi; CIA, Confederazione Italiana Archeologi; Italia Nostra; ANAI, Associazione Nazionale Archivistica Italiana; Archeoclub d’Italia; Do you recognize me? I’m a Cultural Heritage Professional; Legambiente Sicilia; Friends of Sicilian Museums; Sicilian Forum of Movements for Water and Common Goods; Zero Waste Sicilia; WWF Sicilia; Rodotà Committee Public Goods and Municipalities Sicily; Consumers Center Italy; the ’Un’Altra Storia’ Association; Arci Sicilia; SiciliaAntica; International Puppet Museum “Antonio Pasqualino”; Article 9 Association; Do the Right Thing! Sicily; BCsicilia Association; “La Civetta di Minerva” Cultural Association; “Bianchi Bandinelli” Association of Rome; and “Assotecnici” National Association, as well as the Orders of Architects of Palermo and Catania.

And even before opening, the discussion table cashes in on a success: last Tuesday during consideration in the Culture Commission, the entire Title VI on landscape planning was repealed. In 2018 an attempt to transfer not to the municipalities, but even to the regional government, landscape protection, with a rule passed in that case, was stopped by a Constitutional Court ruling that declared its illegitimacy.

But everything else about this umpteenth attempt to strike at the tools and regulations for the protection and preservation of Sicily’s cultural heritage remains standing. Underlying it are two substantial misunderstandings. The legislature would like to transpose into the Region, with “a clumsy copy and paste of the Urbani Code,” as shrewdly observed by SiciliAntica, the national regulations for the protection of cultural heritage. That one would have to wonder, then, on the basis of which legislation protection is also exercised in the island, if not precisely the Code, as a result of the legal principle of dynamic transposition. The Constitutional Court, in the aforementioned judgment, recognizes the Code as a national law “of great economic and social reform that even regions with special statutes must observe” (judgment 172/2018). Not to mention that we have already seen how many articles of this bill are, on the contrary, contrary to the Code itself. A “legal paradox,” notes the CIA.

Not only that. The legislature would be transposing the Franceschini Reform. And here we are at the paradox, because one would be copying the copier: “Franceschini has copied from the Sicilians,” was the title of our very article in “Il Giornale dell’Arte,” in 2015, in which we first pointed out that the two qualifying passages of the Mibact reform (autonomous museums and unique superintendencies) were borrowed from the Sicilian “model.” Of course, one must also know how to copy. Franceschini perfected and rationalized the governance system “invented” in Sicily for autonomous institutes. Here, however, in archaeological parks, the director is supported by a technical-scientific committee, which should be an exclusively technical advisory body and, instead, its opinion supplements the effectiveness of administrative acts. It also functions as a Cda, a management body (present only in the Valley of the Temples Park, where, on the contrary, the technical-scientific committee is missing). In the autonomous state institutes, on the other hand, Cda, Committee and Board of Auditors (absent in the Sicilian ones), are three collegial bodies with distinct tasks. Providing for them in Sicily as well, however, would not be enough. The general systematization requires several corrections of focus. Above all, the presence of the mayor (or mayors) in the committee must be reviewed, so that in a Region institution, hinged in the BBCC Department, another territorial body, the municipality, is found to have decision-making power. Not so in the state, where among the members of the Committee is a member appointed by the municipality, which must identify him or her from university professors or experts with proven scientific qualifications in cultural heritage. The mayor does not sit on it. None of this can be read in Title IV of the bill, which was essentially spared by the amendments.

The Zisa Cultural Sites in Palermo. Ph. Credit Vincenzo Miceli

Governance or paralysis in autonomous institutions?

Aware of the contradictory and deficient nature of the regional legislation that regulates (in addition to the establishment) the organization of archaeological parks (L.R. 20/2000), the unfortunate councillor Sebastiano Tusa had tried to indicate steps and priorities of the reform. With three bills between July and October 2018, he wanted to ensure that the parks’ managerial and financial autonomy would not remain on paper. With a formula, however, equally, lacking: although one does not exclude the other, Tusa wanted to do the opposite of what Bonisoli had tried to do: eliminate the committee in favor of the Cda. He had envisioned, however, a “solidarity fund,” like that of Mibac, whereby 10 percent (raised there to 25 percent) of the receipts the large parks must give to the smaller ones.

Those bills, never converted into law, despite government announcements in the aftermath of the air tragedy, we find them forfeited right into the Sammartino bill. But if the parks are not provided with the indispensable governance bodies we have just mentioned, let alone autonomy, budgets will have to continue to be approved always in Palermo.

But there is more, always on the archaeological parks front. A rather singular idea of Crocetta’s is dusted off: in the case of the appointment of a director from outside the administration, his economic treatment would be borne by the park’s budget. Imagine, that is, a director who has to promote cultural activities with the sting of the need to secure a salary! And there have already been far too many banquets and rock concerts at our cultural heritage sites.

Then there is a very dangerous paragraph in this bill, the one that intends to transfer from the Superintendency to the BoD, which we said is a management body, the authorization on the projects of interventions falling within the perimeter of the park. Already in the Guidelines for Sicilian Archaeological Parks of 2001, it was stressed “the exceptional character of this last provision, which constitutes a derogation from the normal competencies in terms of protection of cultural and landscape heritage,” specifying that “this opinion therefore remains delegated to the Superintendencies.” And if at the time it was not recognized that the technical-scientific committee, due to the nature of its composition, could express the “technical opinion” now provided for in Articles 21 (removal, demolition, displacement, etc., of cultural property) and 146 (landscape authorization) of the Code, let alone whether such an opinion can be expressed by a Cda.

Already, the technical role. All Associations agree that Law 10/2000, which effectively zeroed it out, is in the dock. But since everyone also agrees that the Urbani Code is also law in Sicily, it is worth remembering that Article 9 bis of the Code (which implements Law 110 of July 22, 2014, on the recognition of cultural professions) states that interventions in the protection and enhancement of cultural heritage “are entrusted to the responsibility and implementation, according to their respective competencies, of archaeologists, archivists, librarians, demoethnoanthropologists, physical anthropologists, and restorers [...].” So, according to the hierarchy of sources in law, even in Sicily an agronomist could not substitute the technical opinion of an art historian, should not be chosen instead of the latter in the assignment of a position to be filled. These seem obvious issues. And, instead, it is dramatically customary in the island, with all the consequences of the lack of “technical” quality in the opinions given.

The Regional Council of Cultural Heritage, the counterpart of the Superior Council.

Among those three Tusa bills now “forfeited” in the Sammartino bill is also the one that intended to reform the Regional Council of Cultural Heritage. A strategic body for managing the protection and enhancement of Sicily’s heritage. It should also provide guidance on the planning of the region and express opinions on its implementation. Instead, it seems that it can be dispensed with: by the current government it was convened only for the hasty establishment of archaeological parks. An advisory body of the President of the Region, instead of the Minister of Cultural Heritage, as is, on the other hand, the counterpart Superior Council. A peculiar hybrid architecture seats technicians and politicians together. It had its own historical reason that is now outdated: we can imagine that a few years after that 1975 in which the Ministry of Cultural Heritage was born in the State and at the same time all the competencies in the field were transferred to the Autonomous Region, the regional law of 1977 had provided that politicians and technicians together would concur in the construction of this new system. But far from that founding phase, we have been writing for years that it is necessary to rethink this council as a purely technical advisory body, as it is in the state. This is now intended to be done with Article 43 of the present bill. If only because it traces by weight the composition of the state one, providing for the presence of eminent personalities from the world of culture, respecting the gender balance (although the presence of a restorer or expert in cultural heritage conservation has not been provided for). But saving a single article cannot be enough to keep afloat a bill that treads water on all sides.

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