If the Sanremo Festival is truly-as it is every year-"a mirror of the country," the image reflected this year is clear. On one side, the blue carpet in front of the Ariston Theater, illuminated and branded by the main sponsors: Eni and Costa Crociere. On the other, thirteen members of Extinction Rebellion were taken to the police station, held for over six hours, and then given expulsion orders ranging from one to three years for displaying anti-greenwashing signs. In the middle, a phrase that carries more weight than any refrain: "You have no rights when you're in police custody."
Greenwashing in prime time
The action lasted just a few minutes. Ironic signs, based on the titles of the competing songs, denounced the image-cleaning operation of fossil fuel multinationals that are investing increasingly heavily in cultural sponsorship. The mechanism is well known: extraction, burning, and fossil fuel navigation continue, but culture, sports, and entertainment are funded. The brand is associated with the national holiday. The climate crisis remains off-screen. This isn't philanthropy. It's normalization.
Since 1951, Sanremo has been building collective imaginations. While individual emotion is celebrated on stage, an economic model that is structurally co-responsible for the ecological crisis is consolidated on the catwalk.
Expulsion orders for a peaceful protest
After the arrest-defined as "identifying" despite the people having already identified themselves-there were complaints for unannounced demonstration (Article 18 of the Consolidated Law on Public Safety) and non-compliance (Article 650 of the Criminal Code), in addition to mandatory expulsion orders. This measure, born out of anti-mafia efforts, was applied to those displaying small banners. All this while the new security decree was coming into force, further tightening penalties and fines for those demonstrating without warning or "disrupting" public events. Dissent isn't openly banned. It's made costly. Risky. Expelable.
The officer's phrase-"we'll see about rights later"-captures a political climate in which freedom is no longer a prerequisite, but a deferred concession.
The Other Sanremo
Yet the city isn't just blue carpets and sponsors. A few streets from the Ariston, in the Invisible City, among the works of Palestinian children in the "HEaRT of GAZA" exhibition, Alessio Lega sang. An anarchist singer-songwriter and longtime contributor to A Rivista Anarchica, Lega belongs to a tradition that doesn't consider music a commodity to be shared, but a tool for memory and choice. While on the official stage, war remains a generic emotion or prudent silence, there, Gaza has a name. It has faces. It has children's drawings. While the Festival celebrates sponsored national unity, the counter-concert reopens the conflict: climatic, colonial, social.
Faithful Mirror, Visible Cracks
If Sanremo is truly a mirror of the country, then it reflects a very precise balance: fossil fuel multinationals financing the national festival; dissent treated as an obstacle to be removed quickly; administrative measures designed to target organized crime applied to those displaying signs; rights evoked as formalities, suspendable "in the meantime."
The message is simple: the show must go on. The fossil fuel industry's brand can parade. The climate crisis cannot be stopped. The rhetoric of freedom can shine. An unauthorized protest cannot disturb it. And yet, a few streets away, a concert for Gaza reminds us that culture can still choose a side. That music is not just the soundtrack of consensus, but can also become a counterpoint. The Festival portrays an Italy that wants to appear united, peaceful, and radiant. The expulsions, the expulsion orders, the phrase "you have no rights" portray another Italy: more nervous, more authoritarian, more fragile. Perhaps the true mirror is not the Ariston stage. They're the cracks that open at the edges.
And that's where, sooner or later, the air comes in.
Totò Caggese
https://umanitanova.org/lucidare-il-palco-oscurare-il-dissenso-sanremo-sponsor-fossili-fogli-di-via-e-controcanti/
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Link: (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #7-26 - Polishing the stage - obscuring dissent. Sanremo: fossil sponsors, expulsion orders, and counter-melodies (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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