Ask the average Briton what he considers the most socially unacceptable forms of behaviour and he will probably answer: swearing, drink-driving and smoking in public. Ask the average Italian man driving home from the bar on his Vespa why neither he nor the eight-year-old on the handlebars are wearing a helmet, and he’ll tell you to mind your own business before stubbing out his Kent Light on your shorts.
Such is the contempt shown by the average Italian for the letter of the law, in Italy you can buy a T-shirt with a diagonal black stripe across it, to wear in the car in place of a seatbelt. To us, this seems as pointless and suicidal as driving around with your eyes shut. But Italians like to take responsibility for what they do. They thrive on the day-to-day tussle with mortality. So, stuff health and safety – they will fight to the death for that death to be gory and unnecessary.
When it comes to building a house, then, it’s no surprise that Italians will resist and circumlocute petty constraints such as planning permission – as David Westby and his girlfriend, Leonie Whitton, discovered when they moved south from Tuscany a few years ago to the wilder frontiers of Puglia, in the heel of Italy.
The couple bought a medieval olive farm from which they intended to run their residential art school, Il Collegio. Only one building stood there, a one-bedroom farmhouse with a vaulted ceiling, surrounded by ruins. They had hoped to get permission to convert a makeshift stable into accommodation, but were told they could extend their house only by a paltry 10% – the planning rule of thumb in Italy.
They realised that the only way to get what they wanted was to go native and play the planning system just like everyone else: build what they wanted first, then apply for retrospective planning permission. To do anything like this in Britain would border on the criminal and be liable to utter failure. In Italy, it’s normal. You build a house illegally (“abusively”, they say) and wait for a government amnesty, held every few years. You then send photos of your building, apply for the permission, or condono, pay a fine and get the paperwork approved.
It is such a common procedure, it has become relatively straightforward. Except that the fine is exorbitant – Westby and Whitton’s build budget was a mere £25,000, nearly £10,000 of which was swallowed up by the condono – and that without the permission, no utility company will connect to your property. And the amnesty is not held every year – more like once every 10.
Not that this seemed like a problem to Westby and Whitton. This was in January 2004, and the next amnesty was due in March that year. Brilliant news. They had three months to erect the shell of the building. Or not. In a typically inexplicable move, in mid-January, the government brought forward the amnesty, leaving the couple just 24 hours to build a house.
Which, miraculously, they did – after a fashion. In one day, this pair of pensioners constructed, in the pouring rain, a building out of concrete blocks, with no mortar or render, no doors or windows, just openings; a single-storey building, its blockwork “skin” wrapped around the wooden poles of the makeshift stable, apparently supporting its tin roof.
Westby is particularly gleeful about it: “In the photographs, it looked uncannily realistic. It was a brilliant piece of theatre that persuaded the planners.” Whitton is less cheery: “It was the worst day of my life.” Last week, I visited Il Collegio, which is thriving. The rooms and stone-block romanesque arcades are all finished, there’s a plunge pool carved from the rock and the gardens are decorated with sculpture and mosaics – all Westby and Whitton’s work. It’s not so much theatrical now as an uncannily atmospheric setting for a scene from Gladiator. As though you’ve stepped back 2,000 years.
Which is how it can feel when you’re trying to deal with the Italian state machine. In fact, the only attempt the government appears to have made to alter the condono scheme is to increase the fines. That’s because condoni now represent a significant source of state income. Nevertheless, in the end, this couple got what they wanted. That’s because Italian society, though bureaucratic, is self-serving and pragmatic. Ultimately, though, it is about who you know, rather than what you pay. (Contrary to what you might think, it is quite hard to bribe someone there.) Above all, the result will be concomitant with the effort you make to go native.
Which seems to me to be an infinitely more pleasant way to do business than living under the Napoleonic code in France, and having to fill everything out in quintuplet before going in front of a tribunal every time you apply for a licence to keep a goldfish – where the state decides everything and pragmatism is viewed with intense suspicion. Or, at the other extreme, living in Spain, where there have been so many scandals involving illegally built property that you can never be sure that the council won’t come round and order you to pull down your home.
Or deciding, worst of all, to opt for Germany or Scandinavia because there aren’t any real problems with buying a property there. That would be a cop-out – like deciding to follow your planning officer’s advice and increase the size of your house by just 10%. Give me a 100% increase in the quality of my life, I say: give me some sun, a vineyard and the chance to get drunk and find out where the local sale is.