Script
So, what’s next for the Venetian Stories podcast?
We’ve come to the end of the short chronological narrative, with the rather sad state of Venice as it is today.
I do have plans for this podcast, but somebody has thrown a spanner in the works. Or rather, a few. Or maybe a truck load of spanners.
Now, I’m going on a rather long rant about these spanners, and especially about those who are tossing them around, so if you only care about the future plans on the podcast, spanners or no spanners, please skip forward to X minutes and Y seconds for the podcast related bits at the end.
Tourist guide exams
The Italian Ministry of Tourism has opened up for applications to become authorised tourist guides, after a hiatus of over ten years. Last exam in the Veneto region was in 2010.
And no, I am not a guida turistica here in Italy because I started History Walks in Venice some five-six years ago when that possibility wasn’t available.
I am an accompagnatore turistico, which is more akin to a tour leader. I was in one of the last cohorts in Italy to pass that exam before that was shut down too.
Besides fancy titles and nice ID tags to carry around on a lanyard, the main difference is that a tourist guide can take people inside museums, galleries, churches and such, while an accompagnatore can only work outside those places. There’s a bit more to it than that, but relative to what I do, that is the main difference.
Oh, also, authorised tourist guides get free access to all museums in all of Italy. That alone is almost worth the effort.
Why hasn’t it been possible to become an authorised tourist guide in Italy for the last 10–15 years?
Italy being Italy, this is way more complicated that is worth yours and my time discussion in great detail. The short story is that the whole process has ended up in a deadlock between the European Union, which wants such crafts harmonised over the entire single market, the Italian state where tourism is the third largest sector of the national economy, the twenty Italian regions which constitutionally used to have competences over all things tourism, and the various associations of existing tourist guides, who are afraid that an influx of new guides will lower prices and hurt their income.
So international relations, Italian constitutional issues, and plain old self-interest from some influential lobby groups have conspired to keep everything blocked for a decade.
So, why has the situation been unblocked now?
The short answer is money. Lots of money.
When the European Union made funds available for post-Covid recovery, Italy received a proportionally larger share because the country was badly hit early in the pandemic. Europe-wide, we’re talking about hundreds of billions of euros, of which a sizeable chunk was allocated to Italy.
At some point, the European Commission told the Italian government, that some of those funds would be blocked unless Italy moved forward on the implementation of various EU directives, which, for various reasons of internal Italian politics, the Italian government hadn’t enacted nationally.
This included the harmonisation rules for tourist guides.
The Italian government has therefore rushed through a new law, more or less disregarding the opposition of the regions and the guide lobbies.
The old system of tourist guide authorisation was regional, so Italy had twenty slightly different systems.
The new system is national, for all of Italy, probably to simplify and make it easier to prove to the European Commission that the issue is solved. Had it been left to the regions, it would have taken years before all twenty finished their legislative processes.
The new law was passed last summer, the implementation decrees published at the end of the year, and the practicalities of the exams to become an authorised tourist guide came out in February.
Plenty of things are still missing, though.
We don’t know the exact curriculum for the exams, and we don’t know the dates.
In fact, we don’t even know if there will be an exam.
Legal recourse
Some of the national associations of tourist guides have launched a legal recourse against the new rules. Their declared grievances is that the new system is national rather than regional, that the language requirements are too low, and that a university degree is no longer required.
In reality, it seems very clear that they simply don’t want the competition of newly authorised guides.
A preliminary hearing in the administrative tribunal of the Lazio region was held on May 13th. The court declared the recourse admissible, but also that the complexity of the issues were such, that the definitive hearing will be later. It is currently scheduled for October 15th.
The Ministry of Tourism has not made any public statements yet, except rumours that they intend to move on with the process, despite the lingering legal recourse.
Few people believe they will, because it will just deepen the legal mess the whole process is now mired in.
The ministry would risk authorising tourists guides, and then lose the case, so the authorisations would be invalid, opening up for more legal problems, now from the people who’ve passed the exam, but don’t get the promised authorisation.
The date for the first written exam must be published at least forty days before, which means that if the ministry waits for the hearing in October, the exam can be in December at the earliest. That is, if the ministry wins. If they don’t, nobody knows what will happen, but in that case, any exams will be next year at the earliest.
The conclusion of this much too long discussion is, that I and almost thirty thousand others have been studying like mad for an exam which on any day could be just forty days away.
Yet, four months after the publication of the rules for the authorisations, nobody has any idea about how the process will unfold, or if it even will.
If the ministry ignores the tribunal and the ongoing legal recourse — as rumours are they will — the exam could still be only forty days away.
On the other hand, the whole process could stall indefinitely, easily until next year.
So, there are almost thirty thousand persons of all ages, all over Italy, trying to prepare for a vast exam, which might be in forty-one days, or next year, or who knows.
The curriculum — which is only loosely outlined by the ministry — is so vast that forty days is not enough to prepare.
We’ll be reading up on Italian history, art history, archaeology, geography and all the laws, rules and regulations related to being a tourist guide.
If that doesn’t sound like a very detailed curriculum, well, it isn’t, but that is what we have to work on.
The podcast
Now, just because the Italian Ministry of Tourism has messed up my plans, I’m not going to abandon the Venetian Stories.
My working plan — or, more precisely, my provisional working plan — is to select some themes, and vary the episodes between them.
I won’t do consecutive series of episodes within one theme, but rather move around between them.
Given the mess around the tourist guide exams, with far too many unknowns for comfort, I want to keep everything as flexible as possible, so the work on the podcast and the newsletter can adapt to my other engagements, which are largely outside my control.
One theme, which has been mentioned in passing throughout the chronological episodes, will be those occasions where Venice fought with its back against the wall, figuratively speaking of course. There were numerous wars and conflicts, where Venice might not have survived, and I want to explore those existential struggles.
Another theme I’d like to explore, is that of the protector saints of Venice and of the Venetians. St Mark is well known, but there were many other important saints in the Venetian pantheon. St Theodore, St Lucy, St George, St Nicholas, and others.
Then there’s the Venetian Republic, which was a quite intriguing kind of state. It never had a real constitution, there was nothing which wasn’t negotiable, and yet it lasted for a millennium. I’d like to explore how this state developed and functioned, how the institutions and norms appeared, grew and changed.
Related to this, there’s the — now mostly forgotten — Venetian national narrative. Every nation has a national narrative, which is meant to create cohesion and community. Venice had one too, but as the state disappeared over two centuries ago, many of these stories are little known today. Yet, they were the stories which once defined Venetian-ness.
Besides my history walks in Venice, I also work as a guide on the Lazzaretto Nuovo. It is a small museum on an island in the lagoon, run by volunteers, in what was once a Venetian quarantine station for the black plague. I will probably do some episodes on Venice and the plague.
Lastly, I’ll be talking about some of the notable Venetians who left their mark on Venice throughout its history. I have a list of interesting persons, and more will come. This theme will likely be one of the more persistent ones.
It is also likely that some episodes will treat subjects that I run into as I prepare for the tourist guide exams.
So, the podcast will continue, but under the shadow of the shenanigans of the Italian Ministry of Tourism.
Leave a Reply