Driving down Italy's Adriatic coast from Pescara towards Bari a couple of weeks ago, we were enthralled by the handsome, fertile and relatively unspoiled seaside landscape. Then, a familiar thing happened. Just after we had passed out of the Abruzzo region into the Molise, a great ugly monster emerged out of nowhere.
Visible from the autostrada and situated right on the seafront in a rural, not densely inhabited area, there stood a 10-storey apartment block. This noble edifice, one presumes, provides a mix of weekend apartments for locals and holiday apartments for tourists. Its total lack of any reference point - either in its shape, size or choice of building materials (largely concrete) - to the surrounding rural and architectural landscape was staggering. Yet another abusivo monstrosity, one concluded.
The adjective abusivo and the noun abusivismo are two of the most frequently recurring words in the Italian language, words which cover a wide variety of sins. Abusivismo is practically an all-encompassing alternative regime to the state and refers to a whole range of behaviour that is not so much criminal as merely unauthorised, not so much illegal as merely canny and which may find its roots in regional diffidence to or alienation from the central state.
Although the term abusivo can even refer to the self-appointed (often non-EU) car-park attendant who looks for a small tip as you get out of your car at the local supermarket, it is most widely used in relation to the hundreds of thousands of buildings up and down the Italian peninsula, built without local authority planning permission and often in direct contravention of planning regulations.
The vast majority of these abusivo buildings are private houses which, while they may disfigure the landscape only to a minor degree, often do serious damage to the eco-system and soil sub-structure.
Abusivo building is widely believed to have played a major role in recent environmental disasters such as the landslides in Sarno east of Naples last May or in the torrential flooding experienced in Piedmont and Liguria in recent winters.
Environmentalist organisations claim that nearly one million such illegal buildings have gone up in Italy in the last 16 years (as opposed to four million approved buildings).
For the private citizen intent on building without permission, the trick is to get the building skeleton (rustico) up and, at that point, it becomes difficult for the local authority to do much about it, other than fine the citizen who cheerfully pays his fee (condono).
Often the biggest problem encountered during such building comes from the vigilance not of the local authority but of outraged neighbours, who immediately register a complaint (denuncia) with the local carabinieri. Whole suburban areas of bigger cities are made up entirely of abusivo buildings.
I well recall spending a day on the election campaign trail in 1994 with Alleanza Nazionale deputy Teodoro Buontempo, in his constituency of Lido di Ostia on the coast just outside Rome. For a significant percentage of his electorate, the main issue was could they get their abusivo houses put in regola, i.e. made legal and therefore hooked up to the local authority's sewage system and electricity lines.
On a grander scale, though, there are some spectacular "eyesores" around and I was reminded of the monster in Molise when reading last week of the demolition of the Amalfitana or Fuenti Hotel, on the Amalfi coastline, south of Naples close to Salerno. This 35,000 sq.-ft seven-storey hotel was built between 1968 and 1971 slap bang in the middle of another handsome rocky coastline that just two years ago was named a world heritage site by Unesco.
Open for only four years between 1980 to 1984, when it housed people made homeless by the 1980 Irpinia earthquake, the 250-room Amalfitana has been at the centre of a long and bitter battle between environmentalists and its owner, Dante Mazzitelli, a man who once complained that he was "the most hated hotel owner in Italy". While Mr Mazzitelli's hotel was certainly nothing less than an eyesore, it is difficult not to sympathise with him when he complained last week that his hotel has been unjustly singled out from thousands of other illegal buildings in Italy.
Condemned by a court ruling as far back as 1992, the Amalfitana's days seemed numbered early this year when cases such as this came under the jurisdiction of the Environment Ministry, with Minister Edo Ronchi ordering it to be demolished within 90 days. Despite protests from local politicians and unemployed groups, who both argued that the hotel could create up to 300 jobs, the demolition went ahead last week.
While jobless protesters and local politicians might have their reservations, the demolition represented a major triumph for Italy's largest conservation group, Legambiente, whose president, Ermete Realacci, believes the tide is turning, claiming that more illegal buildings have been demolished in the last six months than in the previous 50 years. Furthermore, he believes the Amalfitana demolition might have a "domino effect" on other similar "eco-monsters", including the infamous case of the housing complex in the Valley of the Greek Temples in Agrigento, Sicily. Legambiente has plenty of work in front of it.