Alberto Rubio
The Italian ambassador to Spain, Giuseppe Grimaldi, sent on Tuesday an open letter to the owner of the restaurant ‘La Camorra-Pasta e Pizza’ in Leon, in which he “invites him to remove from his premises any reference to the Camorra” since he considers that “he makes explicit reference to this criminal phenomenon, also writing it with a gloomy and disturbing variant” in reference to the typeface ‘fraktur’ (gothic).
Grimaldi adds that also “in a post on the Facebook page of his local, addressed to potential workers, there is also a call to join the Camorra of Leon” and that, in the restaurant’s menu, a pizza is offered with the name of the Neapolitan criminal gang. “We are talking,” he stresses, “about a criminal phenomenon, whose illicit activities and misdeeds are meridiously against the values of the European Union.”
The Italian ambassador already expressed his discomfort, last September, in another letter addressed to the president of the basketball club Casademont Zaragoza, for the sponsorship agreement signed, in his case, with the restaurant chain ‘The Mafia sits at the table’.
Grimaldi affirms in his letter that the promoters of the Leonese restaurant have acted with “worrying lightness” since he considers that “the association made between Italian cuisine and a criminal phenomenon, through the trivialization of evil, is highly offensive, disturbing and contrary to public order”, as the European Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the EU Court have ratified.
Finally, the ambassador comes out in defense of the ‘pizzaioli’, whose “art was declared intangible heritage of UNESCO”. And he explains that “for some, this trade constitutes a relevant opportunity for social emancipation and is a possibility of insertion for people at risk of marginalization, who could fall victim to criminal associations”.
