Lucca and the "kebab invasion"

France, morning

The story about protecting culture and traditions in Lucca continues. I am not surprised about that. I am surprised a bit more by the fact that a lot of Lucchesi support this new rule.

In an article of La Repubblica of January last year, it is written that Lucca has already too many kebab places (three in total!!!) and so this creates a damage to the local restaurants, which lately experienced a decrease in their work. Of course, the decrease is not related to the economic crisis or to the fact that normally these restaurants are expensive. No, the fault is of the kebab places. Together with forbidding new kebab places to open, the old mayor of the city proposed a rule for which to save the downtown area of Lucca the following shops should be forbidden to open: take away and pre-cut pizza, fast food, shops selling things for the sea and/or for boats (I really have to get this one and why is against local traditions...but anyway), sex shop (that in Italy are called "sexy shop" like the shops are sexy and not that they are about sex) and big and small malls.

So, in theory if you are for preserving the historical image of the city and for protecting local activities, can the current (and previous) mayor of Lucca explain me why the main downtown streets are full of famous clothing chains (e.g., Intimissimi, Benetton, Sisley, Calzedonia), which are not typically local nor minimally traditional? Are they going to tell us now that these big chains do not disturb at least a bit the local and historical shops downtown (which in any case are so expensive that if I would have to buy my clothes there I could go around nacked)?

So, I guess that the rule of "saving local traditions and the image of historical city" is limited only to a few "disturbing" activities which apparently make enough money to disturb someone else with enough power to ask to the mayor to forbid to have more "ethnic" restaurants in the city center. Of course, in Italy we often manage to have a few "ad personam" rules that benefit only a few people who continue to make more and more money to the disadvantage of more people.

Of course, now Lucca is well known everywhere, at least in Italy, since this event started a debated at the National level. Shame on you, Lucca!