Lecce, Cathedral Square
Lecce becomes a beautiful gay love story and the center-right, as they say in these cases, rises up. Land of Mayor Adriana, then, or of Governor Nichi? Or no man's land? In the baroque capital of Salento, in recent days, filming was completed for Manual of Love 2, a film by Giovanni Veronesi which will be released during the Christmas season. But the news sparking the controversy, widely reported in the Puglia edition of Corriere del Mezzogiorno, is that the producers managed to secure the location for the key scene in the hall of honor of Palazzo Carafa, where the city hall is located. But what does the scene consist of?
At the beginning we only know that when the two main actors arrive, Antonio Albanese and Sergio Rubini, a rumor peppered with a question mark spreads throughout the town: "They're celebrating a gay wedding, how is that possible, we're not in Spain, are we?" The rumors even reach the ears of an authoritative neighbor of the building, the archbishop Cosimo Francesco Ruppi, who immediately acts accordingly and orders the Piazza Duomo to be cleared of the trucks and campers of the film production. The mystery is then revealed at a press conference: the hall of Palazzo Carafa served as a fake backdrop for a gay wedding celebrated in Barcelona, where the law promoted by Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero is in force. In short, in the film it will seem Barcelona, but in reality the shooting took place in Lecce.
As if that were not enough, then, 'actor Sergio Rubini tells journalists about the governor's Puglia Nichi Vendola, openly gay: «I have never been convinced that this land has truly changed. I feel that 'it is always something old''. At that point, for the city council of Adriana Poli Bortone, a member of the National Alliance, the measure is more than enough. The mayor sends forward her loyal Tourism Councilor Severo Martini, who takes aim at Rubini and even Vendola: "You can't come to Lecce and provoke controversy over gay marriage. We can be tolerant of different sexual habits, but not of their sensationalization. We don't agree with Zapatero." And again: "While it's true that this is the region governed by Nichi Vendola, it's also true that this is the city that has been governed for nine years by Adriana Poli Bortone and a center-right government." The city council also complains that they didn't know anything about the specific scene to be filmed in the hall of honor. The controversy is becoming increasingly political. Again, through the councilor, Mayor Poli Bortone's Center for the Liberal Party (CdL) goes so far as to say that "the election of a communist to the regional government was merely a blip, because the data from subsequent elections have shown a different trend.".
And what about Governor Nichi? He prefers not to speak. He refuses interviews on the subject. In some cases, silence is golden. Or rather, baroque.
