With the support of the Embassy of Portugal in Rome
"A place is never just 'a place'. A place is a part of ourselves.
Somehow, without even knowing it, we carried that place inside us and one day, by chance, we got there."
Stories of Italians in LIsbon
Stop. From the beginning, slowly.
Once again.
a documentary by Luca Onesti, Massimiliano Rossi and Daniele Coltrinari
- What's your name?
Hello. I am Marco,
I'm 32 and I've lived here in Lisbon for almost three years.
I think it is a great thing to tell the story of this Italian reality of, as I like to call them,
the "political refugees" that moved here.
- Do you feel like a refugee?
I feel a bit like a refugee
but I think this is the nicest refuge in the world.
I remember the first day I had my job interview with the business that I ended up working for
I was in a panic, very agitated.
[Marianna Russo, Call centre operator]
then I looked around me and saw at least 15 other Italians.
So I was a bit surprised by this job market here,
all in the sector of call centres, client services, etc.
In a sense I understood that this is the motivation behind so many Italians coming here:
the search for a job.
So with this ease of finding work here,
and quite well paid for Portuguese standards,
I felt like I had hit the jackpot.
Of course there's the other side of the coin.
The negative aspect is that you rarely
get out of these call centres.
In the sense that all the Italians I know here,
including myself, have studied,
but none of us work in the field we would like,
for which we studied,
or in any case, only few people manage
to achieve their passions,
and those who do often have to make great sacrifices.
[Daniela Crespi, Artist engraver]
This way of dyeing the sheets
is normally used with metal sheets
if they have been worked with this technique,
the Mezzotint technique,
Not so much now,
but when the sheet is underneath you shouldn't stop
otherwise the roller will leave a mark.
Yes, we have it.
Here it is.
It's a whale flying over Genova
because I often feel like a fish out of water.
My dad made his money demolishing ships
and I spend it making them.
That's a big difference, we're the complete opposite!
- There's a certain saudade to demolishing ships…
Yeah, great saudade.
As a kid my dream was
to take one of these boats that arrived
where my dad worked. He mainly handled
the wood of the ships.
They were small boats,
you saw them there in the shape of a boat
and in the end they became piles of wood.
So it was kind of sad.
I liked the idea that one day I would take a boat
that was dead and put it back together.
"Who I am" is an atavistic question,
I can tell you my name,
but who I am I am yet to discover.
My name is Raffaele Luciani, I am a naval carpenter
or, to big myself up, a master shipwright
I think I'll stay in Portugal as my base.
I left Italy six years ago, for various reasons,
so I am without fixed abode,
I move for work, I go here and there,
and this is a place I like,
where I can lay my things,
because right now I am a bit precarious here
In this house all I own is a lamp
and the crepe paper I use to dim the light at night.
Other than that I have a suitcase.
In Brazil I discovered samba, the sea,
[Michele Mengucci, Musician]
the people of the tropics, open and friendly.
You know, coming from Rimini,
I thought this must be what life is all about.
And when, after my degree in Engineering
I got an offer to go to Lisbon,
I thought: amazing!
Portugal must be a European country similar to Italy
but with more of the Brazilian energy.
Then I realised I was wrong about certain things,
but I was right about others.
In October I will have been here for 16 years.
[Francesco Valente, Musician]
I've met loads of Italians here.
I probably have more friends in Italy now than when I lived there,
people from all the regions of Italy.
Because each year, Italians come here
mostly for the Erasmus Programme,
and many of them end up staying.
Amongst these old friends are the members of Anonima Nuvolari.
Thanks!
We're Anonima Nuvolari.
We try to revisit what we think
are the best chapters of Italian music
of the 1950s and 60s, our own way.
We've played in Argentina, Uruguay, France, Spain, Italy,
in Switzerland several times,
and pretty much all over Portugal.
You need to make the left hand less loud
and the right hand louder.
Always keeping the crescendo-diminuendo dynamic,
quite espressivo, ok?
Every time you have the theme.
And another thing: the left-hand trill.
Lighter and faster, ok?
Shall we start from the beginning?
Left
Right
I had dreams, like any artist and musician
[Daniela Ignazzitto, Piano teacher at the Lisbon Conservatoire]
of playing certain pieces, for example.
I managed to achieve them all.
The biggest dream, I remember, I was 18,
I was studying Brahms' first concert.
One day, it happened to be my birthday,
I went to class
and told the teacher:
"Professor, I have a surprise for you!
I studied the first part of Brahms' concert
for piano and orchestra, I'll play it for you!"
She replied: "No no, we have no time,
we need to study the pieces for the exam."
I was desperate, I said: "But how?
It's my birthday, you can't do this to me!
Just five minutes, then we'll play whatever you want."
And she still said no.
From that moment, the concert stayed with me,
in the sense that it was always important,
a point of reference and a dream to make true.
And here it came true,
I played it with the Orchestra of the
Lisbon School of Music, in the São Luis theatre.
It was great.
Right, here we are in one of the most central parts
of the city, maybe the best known place,
which is the Chiado. And we're in front of a place
which has a connection to Italian culture.
[Carmine Cassino, Researcher]
Because here, up until the 1860s,
was a place that was the symbol of the
bohémien and dandy cultures of the city,
the so-called Caffè Marrare.
Marrare, as you may have guessed,
is an Italian surname.
Not just of Italian origin, but fully Italian,
that through the corruption of Portuguese
became Marrare.
It was the name of Antonio Marrara,
a Calabrian from the province
of Reggio Calabria. He came from a small town
called Calanna, at the feet of the Aspromonte mountains.
He emigrated in the late 18th century
to be the butler of the Portuguese ambassador
in Paris - he had met him in Naples
when he was a Navy officer.
Then he came to Lisbon and slowly made his way up,
he created a small empire,
with various bars around the city.
The most famous of the four bars that
Marrare, Antonio Marrara, opened in Lisbon
was that of the Chiado.
What were the main activities
of the Italians in Lisbon in the 1800s?
There were two in particular,
if we disregard all the stuff related
to the world of entertainment, like dancers,
opera singers, that's a different world,
that was present in Lisbon
at least from the 1600s until well into the 1900s.
Many of them were drink merchants,
they sold Italian liquors that they imported.
One of the main ports for export to Lisbon in the 1800s
was that of Livorno. It dispatched
a great amount of goods coming from the ports and centres
of pre-unification Italy.
They were also merchants of confectioneries, the confeiteiros.
In this category we must also consider
food producers, because Italians were also,
along with the Galicians, the most numerous managers
of the so-called Casas de pasto,
that today we call Comes e bebes
which were the eateries of the time,
the places you would go to for a bite.
Italians were very important
in this sector, they essentially controlled it.
We are Max and Elisa.
We've been here in Lisbon for four months, officially,
but we came many times over the years
and we decided to move here, because…
We'd grown a bit tired of Italy,
most of all of our hometown, that in the past few years
experienced a terrifying implosion,
especially in terms of our line of work,
which is about communication, being surrounded by people.
And in the past ten years Bologna has really changed under this aspect.
The second time you come here, I think,
unless you don't like the city, which could also happen,
but if you like it and you come a second time,
then you start to understand what the famous saudade really is.
Because afterwards you realise you're sad.
And it's also a matter of, what's the word,
psychogeography:
our city,
which is a beautiful city,
where I lived for 40 years,
is the city with the greatest number of porticos in the world.
This is a really beautiful feature, but you never see the sky. Never.
So you basically live your days
underneath the porticos. You see the sky if you go to the beach,
or to the park, but in your day to day
you never experience it.
But here the sky is enormous and you see it all the time
and I in particular started to really miss this.
I had the feeling I was always moving indoors,
never leaving the house.
It's called Tasca Mastai in honour of a dear friend
who used to come to our bar in Bologna.
He was a naive artist and a poet,
who left us really suddenly,
in the manner of an artist.
He had a small accident, didn't cure himself,
and one day he suddenly passed away.
And he left a really big void.
As we would often talk to him
about our dream to move to Lisbon,
we decided to take him to Lisbon,
seen as now he can travel with us.
["Overly rehearsed memories can tire the mind,
but I will never forget Lisbon in the afternoon,
in a bar, with that complacent sadness
that they call saudade."]
[Marco De Camillis, Coreographer]
This is an American format,
the show is called "Toca a mexer".
It's about overweight people,
who during the week are on a diet,
they go to the gym, they lift weights, etc.,
and on top of that they practice some dance routines.
So they also have to lose weight dancing.
I worked a lot in Spain too,
first with Sabina Stilo, then with Raffaella Carrà,
then one day, always as a dancer, in Rome, I started
a show called "Numero Uno", with Pippo Baudo.
The format was sold to Portugal,
we were all Italian dancers.
I got some contacts to run a workshop the following year.
So in 1996 I came back to run this workshop,
I did a one-week special on TV,
and from there I started to work here in Lisbon,
I've now been here for 16 years.
Portugal was a real discovery.
I remember in 1995, when I first came here,
the centre of Lisbon was really run down,
there were lots of abandoned buildings.
The city was peculiar,
it gave me a sense of melancholy,
and I think maybe that's what Lisbon is: slightly melancholy.
To me Lisbon has always been a city that didn't change, it couldn't change.
[Antonio Cardiello, Scholar of Pessoa]
But it did, I did, times have changed and the city has modernized itself.
It has become more international, more touristy.
And it has fascinated all kinds of people,
from every country, of every social class.
It has become a known place.
By doing so I don't feel it so "mine" anymore.
More commercial in a way.
But it hasn't lost those heavenly spots, as I call them, that are still protected.
[Ronaldo Bonacchi, Actor]
Italians are more exuberant, Portuguese people… are not lethargic,
but they're calmer, observant, introspective.
So when I first got here, I thought:
"I'm Italian, I'm exuberant, I'm an actor,
give me two months and I'll be the king of Lisbon!"
But instead of conquering, I was conquered.
I would walk the streets at night, go to the tascas
- the tascas are the taverns of Lisbon -
and drink bagaço, a sort of low quality grappa,
with Lisbon's sad drunkards.
I would get drunk with them, and also be sad.
Instead of conquering I was completely conquered
by this nostalgia, this profound sadness.
In fact, it is not sadness,
it is melancholy.
And at this point I questioned everything, starting from my childhood.
I thought: "What shall I do? Shall I be a fireman? An astronaut?
But I'm good at acting. Why not act?"
[Ronaldo Bonacchi in "Non ci resta che piangere"(1984)]
Listen, we're lost. There was a big oak there last night,
but now it's small.
He's my friend Mario, he's not very well.
- I am! - He's so-so…
So… now we're in Frittole!
Frittole.
Now, forget Frittole. I don't want to hear that name…
Going out of this town called Frittole…
going away from Frittole…
one naturally arrives to another town, which is?
Frittole?
- Hey! - Wait, Saverio! No…
Sorry, forgive him.
We'd like to know something, don't worry.
We're in Frittole, alright, we know that, but…
…we're not really in 1400, are we?
Yes, almost 1500!
I speak Portuguese with a really strong Italian accent
and I thought this would be something
that would prevent me from working here.
But the Portuguese really like Italians,
I don't know why, because we don't really deserve it.
Maybe because they've seen the films, in the original language,
and Italian cinema was very important.
The "commedia all'italiana", with Gassmann, Sordi, they all arrived here,
and they're funny.
So they think that all Italians are funny like that,
they like the language, and I've never hidden the fact that I'm Italian,
taking advantage of this.
Many people ask me what I am,
if I'm an artist or… what am I?
I consider myself a maker of poetic machines.
The apparent movement of the sun in our universe,
forced us to create hours.
Hours forced us to create timezones.
[Pietro Proserpio, Cinematic artist]
So if we go east the hours increase,
and if we go west the hours decrease.
From here, the dance of the hours, up and down, up and down…
And this is a map of Portugal,
that as you can see is horizontal.
Why is it horizontal?
Because it is ancient.
In modern maps, the North is at the top,
because this was the convention established by the powers of the 13th-14th centuries.
At the time the Netherlands, England and Germany,
decided as follows:
the North Pole is on top of everything,
just below that there's us (them),
below us are the Latinos,
below the Latinos are people of all colours.
So, this is the spiral of time.
Time is a spiral that takes us and drags us
irremediably towards our destiny,
without ever stopping.
Time is inserted in the universe,
and this piece also represents the universe,
as you can see here we have the sun,
and through this ribbon it activates time.
These tiny tiny cogs
are the mechanisms of our life.
For us they are something enormous, terrible, unbearable,
but compared to the mechanisms of the universe, they're nothing.
This clock going up and down
symbolises the relativity of time.
Even if our Swiss friends tell us that time
is something rigorous, down to 10/1000 of a second,
this is not true.
When we wait for someone we like,
time never passes,
but when we are with them… it flies!
But even I've said something that is not entirely correct.
I said that time drags us irremediably
towards our destiny without ever stopping.
Man couldn't accept this.
He had to invent something to stop time,
even just for one instant.
And so he invented this thing here:
the camera.
[Do not waist time or life, but do not be their slave]
One thing, a silly thing:
here when you go into a cafe or a bar
to get a coffee,
you might find only one person
making the coffee and taking the money.
So if there happen to be two people in front of you,
you risk waiting ten minutes,
but maybe I need to get a coffee straight away
because I have to get to work.
I find this quite, I wouldn't say irritating,
but it can be annoying.
In Italy this doesn't happen
In Italy you go into a bar and straight away,
before you've even paid, the person making the coffee
looks at you and says, "coffee?" And it's done!
I do miss that.
What do I miss about Italy?
The food… but I've solved that
because although I never used to cook before,
I am a chauvinist by principle,
I was forced to be a feminist.
I learnt to cook Italian dishes because
it seemed compulsory to know how to make spaghetti.
Beautiful Italian women…
Italian women are very beautiful!
Portuguese women have a sense of sin,
they look at you and they have a sense of sin,
which is not bad,
if you have a Catholic education like me
although I am a convinced atheist, thank God!
And when I'm in Italy…
when I'm in Italy…
there are things that…
irony, for instance.
It's different here.
We're very similar, but in Italy…
Italians tell me jokes that I no longer understand
or I tell jokes that they don't fully understand.
Because when you change countries
you become very aware of the differences, for good and bad,
but there are millions of things that you slowly begin
to interiorise, without realising. I don't realise
how Portuguese I've become.
I'm a foreigner here and I'm a foreigner there.
But I also have certain things of both.
When people ask if I'm more Italian or Portuguese
I say: "I'm 80% Italian and 70% Portuguese".
[Marcello Sacco, Teacher of Italian and journalist]
Before I came to Portugal
I knew very little about Portugal.
I didn't know the language or Portuguese culture.
In fact, up until a few weeks before I left
I didn't even know that I would be coming to Portugal.
I'd been to Spain a few times,
I studied Spanish at university.
For me, Portugal was that opaque strip you see
when you go to Spain and buy the newspaper
or watch the weather forecast on TV:
you have the Iberian peninsula and then this opaque or white strip,
you can't really tell what it is.
I was not completely ignorant about it,
but for me it was quite an unknown country,
so there was an element of adventure.
This is the beauty of a journey to me...
Pessoa also said: "Travels are travellers".
So it's not the place you travel to that matters so much, but what you have inside.
It's how the journey changes you.
And it can't change you if you don't leave something,
if you don't lose something of what you are.
It sounds like what Nietzsche would say: "How do you become what you are?".
It's a constant transformation,
it can't be not to lose something on the way, so we do lose something...
It's similar to the attitude of the Eastern philosophy,
the famous Buddisth concept of emptiness:
it is not an emptiness that terrifies, that scares, an absolute nothingness.
No: it's an emptiness that needs to be filled.
So if you don't leave dead weight on the way you can't be filled.
[Silvana Urzini, Italian cultural institute Lisbon]
The presence of Italians here has definitely changed.
In 1994 there were very few of us.
Then in the 1990s, Italians really discovered Lisbon,
thanks to the 1998 Expo
which gave a great contribution
to the knowledge of Lisbon in Italy.
At that time - in 1998 - there were
many Italians here.
The Erasmus Programme
was another factor that promoted the knowledge of Lisbon.
Many young people, many Erasmus students
over the years, later decided to come back
to live and look for work.
That's how things are: human beings like…
Let's say this properly…
Human beings like exotic things,
different things.
So, before coming here,
in Bologna, I played Brazilian music and people liked it.
I came here, I played Brazilian music,
but who wants an Italian playing Brazilian music?
There's already 6 million Brazilians!
So here I started making Italian music, because it was exotic.
When I go to Italy
I play my Portuguese pieces.
Leaving Italy I realised
that after all, Italy has some very good things.
Italian culture is really valued here in Lisbon.
In terms of music,
before the Beatles in the 1960s,
the most popular music here and in the Portuguese colonies
was Italian music:
Modugno… rocks!
He still does.
So I don't know about Berlin, Paris and London,
there are certainly Italian communities there too,
probably more for work related reasons.
Here you can be Italian
like you could in Naples in the 1950s.
Maybe…
I've never been to Naples,
but I have this idea of it.
And in fact the music we make is influenced by Fado:
I sing the way I do because, around Alfama,
I saw Fado musicians…
there was poverty just like in Italy
in the 1950s, maybe a bit more apparent than in Italy.
Luckily now there is the recession,
so we are all in a recession, all equal.
For me, as I've been living off music for a few years,
the crisis didn't really change much.
I've already scraped the bottom…
My last song is called "Volo basso ma volo" [I Fly Low But I Fly],
I keep flying, you see, always flying…
in this Portuguese atmosphere.
I had some contacts in Italy
and I was offered an opportunity to go back
to work on a show for two months.
And to be honest I wanted to go back to Italy,
I was a bit tired of Portugal.
There was this advert in Italy, for a digestif
with a couple
dancing the tango
to a really great piece of music by Piazzolla,
at night, in the various piazzas of Rome:
Piazza Navona, Piazza delle tartarughe...
I would see this, hear the music…
Piazza Navona, the famous Bar della Pace,
where I used to hang out with my friends, almost every evening.
When I saw this advert it hurt
and I wanted to go back to Italy, at all costs.
I decided not to accept the second "Operazione Trionfo", here,
but the producer, a woman,
said to me: "If you go back to Italy I will come to Rome,
grab you by the hair and take you back to Lisbon".
And I remember I called my brother and said:
"Listen, I signed the contract here".
He replied: "You should be happy! They really want you there,
so stay there and work…"
And I said: "Yes, but don't you get it? I'm never coming back".
I wonder… how far did you get in Italy?
So, it's easy to get out, to escape
this Hell that is Italy,
even though you're left with loads of thoughts
and you cry…
when I'm alone in my room
I cry of nostalgia.
Photography Luca Onesti
Editing Massimiliano Rossi
Interviews Daniele Coltrinari
Music Mick Mengucci
Our interviewees:
Thanks to:
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