It’s starting to feel a lot like summer here in Italy, which always means two things: the beaches are filling up, and Italian political news is getting even more unpredictable than usual.

Italy has almost 8,000 kilometres of coastline, and yet, its beaches can feel surprisingly claustrophobic. Particularly in popular holiday hotspots in regions including Puglia and Emilia-Romagna, large parts of the shoreline are dominated by concrete lidi flanked by military formations of sun loungers and umbrellas for hire, packed in ever tighter as cost of living increases bite.

Italy’s characteristic beach clubs, with their coffee bars, DJs and haze of cigarette smoke, are not to everyone’s taste. But they are wildly popular, and are seen by many as the default place to spend your summer sotto l’ombrellone: Italian friends and neighbours view my own annual quest to find new stretches of unspoilt, quiet, free beach (spiaggio libero) as yet another quaint English eccentricity.

After all, there aren’t many free beaches to choose from. The best stretches of coastline and clearest waters are very often given over to the lidi, with perhaps a small square of sand wedged between two beach clubs set aside for those who can’t or don’t want to pay.

Around 50 percent of Italy’s coastline is covered by privately-owned clubs, and in some areas this rises to 70, 90, or even 100 percent. What’s left over often tends to be rocky, remote, or otherwise not particularly accessible. The number of private beach clubs continues to grow every year.

READ ALSO: Why are so many of Italy’s beaches privatised?

Many see the lido as another time-honoured and irreplaceable Italian tradition. But for more than a decade, there have been calls to drastically change the way they’re run.

Italy’s private beaches aren’t actually privately owned – they’re leased by the state to private operators under a concessions system. The licences are handed down without question from one generation to the next and, since 1992, they’ve been automatically renewed.

The EU issued a directive to put Italy’s beach resorts up for tender in order to bring fair competition to a sector widely considered to be mired in secrecy and corruption; complying with this was one of the conditions of Italy receiving European post-Covid recovery funds.

But Italy’s current government has postponed plans to allow the tender process until at least the end of 2024, if not 2025. This isn’t too surprising, since before coming to power the ruling Brothers of Italy party had consistently voted against it. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini is known for his close associations with beach resort managers, while Tourism Minister Daniela Santanchè, known by Italian media as “la ministra balneare” (‘the seaside minister’), had to sell her share in an exclusive beach club upon taking the post.

Meanwhile, the oddest Italian news story we published this week on The Local – and there were a few to choose from – was about Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni criticising an “invasive” tax law brought in by her own government, and in fact by a member of her own party, under her watch. 

The controversial ‘reddimetro’ measure, giving the Italian taxman access to individuals’ bank accounts to check whether their spending matches declared income, was abolished in 2018 but its return was announced in the government’s official business journal this week.

This seemed to come as news to Meloni, who took to Italian politicians’ favourite platform, Facebook, to rail against the law: “Never will any ‘Big Brother tax’ be introduced by this government,” she wrote.

She suspended the measure the next morning – telling reporters she needed to “understand it better” – but not before opposition politicians had seized the opportunity to criticise Meloni, with ex-premier Giuseppe Conte asking: “Was she sleeping?”

The episode has reportedly further heightened tensions within Meloni’s coalition government ahead of European Parliament elections in which all three parties are competing with each other.

And, with Meloni herself standing as an EU candidate and busy on the campaign trail in recent weeks, there were suggestions that she hadn’t been paying enough attention to the task of governing the country.

But we know that, while we might find Italy’s endless political dramas interesting, they really do put some people straight to sleep.

We’ll leave you this week with the latest viral photo of legendary snoozer Claudio Lotito, who is regularly snapped taking a siesta in the Senate – though he insists he’s “just meditating”.

Il presidente della Lazio Claudio Lotito durante l’audizione in Senato dei club della Serie A ha dovuto fare i conti con un colpo di sonno.

Ci ha pensato De Laurentiis a svegliarlo. https://t.co/PljYQVPJum

— Fanpage.it (@fanpage) May 22, 2024