Portable clotheslines in the middle of the street. Colorful sheets that travel from balcony to balcony. T-shirts dripping between the tweezers. Panties and underpants, shamelessly exposed in the open air. The clothes hanging in the alleys of Naples are one of the most vivid memories left by this city in southern Italy. The curious can scrutinize the lifestyle of its inhabitants just by looking up. Like scooters, pizza, Vesuvius or Maradona: street laundry is Neapolitan heritage.
A tradition that last week was threatened by the decision of the Municipality of Naples to face the problem of urban decorum and the security of a city also known for being very chaotic. A draft of a new municipal ordinance on public hygiene included vetoing laundry in the street to improve coexistence between neighbors and passers-by. The intention was to prohibit "hanging sheets, clothing, clothing or the like outside private places, or on windows, terraces and balconies that overlook a public road when this causes dripping," among other regulations such as limiting soccer games or the skateboarding in the monumental galleries, the hours of sale of alcohol, the large bottles or making noise at night and at lunchtime.
The regulations were to come into force at the beginning of July, but the revolt has been so great that in just 24 hours the mayor, Gaetano Manfredi, has had no choice but to back down and clarify that they are not going to regulate or sanction the laundry of their habitants. "The clothes hanging in the alleys are a representative point of our city, not a lack of decorum," he explained to the Italian media. It is obvious that we must always maintain a limit between our popular tradition and order, but I do not think that this ordinance on hanging clothes will ever exist. According to the mayor, in the narrow alleys of Naples, where the sun hardly enters, there is no other way to dry clothes. "As for the measures related to urban decorum, even though they are necessary to restore a dignified face to the city that has been degraded in recent years, they will not be included in this regulation," the mayor's department has settled in a statement.
The controversy generated has been enormous. The Neapolitan journalist Laura Guerra started a battle on social networks by launching the label
Other locals consider that the city has much more urgent problems to solve, such as violence, a few days after Michele della Corte, suspected of belonging to the mafia, was murdered in the middle of the street by two assassins who shot him ten times. “Have you seen that in Naples there is no longer a Camorra, corruption, unemployment, poverty, inequality, microcriminality, problems with garbage collection or abandoned suburbs? Not knowing what problems to solve, they have decided to ban hanging clothes, the same one that has ended up in famous verses of songs and poetry,” another local journalist, Amalia De Simone, criticized on Facebook.
In Corriere della Sera , the writer Maurizio de Giovanni wonders: “How is it possible that what in other places are normal rules of coexistence that concern the sensibilities of citizens, here should be the subject of a municipal ordinance with the threat of sanctions?" While the previous mayor, Luigi de Magistris, was very harsh against his successor: "The bitter truth is that you are not a Neapolitan and you don't even want to be." "This is a blow to our identity," protested opposition councilor Pino De Stasio. "Heresy!" cried one user on Twitter. It seems that it will cost a lot for someone else to dare with the pride of the Neapolitan clothes on the line.
