The annual Regata Storica is an important event in the Venetian calendar — always on the first Sunday of September — and for the rowing clubs of the city, it is probably the main event.
Venetian Stories
This post is an issue of our newsletter — Venetian Stories — which goes out every few weeks, to keep in touch and share stories and titbits from and about Venice and its history.
It is a mix of pageantry and rowing races. There’s a procession of decorated boats with people dressed up in (pseudo) historical costumes, and then there’s a series of rowing races in different categories, involving children, women and men in various types of Venetian boats.
With the Regata Storica, Venice is celebrating itself and its traditions.
At least, ideally it is.
Wave pollution
Venice has many problems, and one of them is the moto ondoso — wave pollution.
It is an ageing city in a fragile ecosystem, battered a million times a day by the waves from all the motorboats, big and small.
Naturally, a body of water like the Venetian lagoon doesn’t have big waves. It is too shallow and too small.
The traditional ways of travelling in the lagoon, by rowed boats or by sail, don’t make many waves.
Consequently, the city was not built to withstand waves, and Venetian rowing is all but impossible where there are many waves.
Motorboats do make waves. Lots of them. Big waves for a place like the lagoon.
Now, for reasons discussed elsewhere, the city of Venice is run by people from the mainland. People who often have little to no understanding of how the city and the lagoon function.
They’re not stupid, though. They can recognise a good business opportunity when they see it, and Venice is a good business opportunity.
So, Venice is being exploited economically by people who understand little of the place, and care even less about it.
Tourism is the main economic opportunity, and with it come boats. High-powered taxis because they need to go to the airport even in bad weather. Large transport boats to serve all the hotels and restaurants in the city. Steel-hulled rubbish collection boats because half a million tourists produce a lot more refuse than less than fifty thousand residents. Then we have the cruise ships and all the super yachts of the wealthy.
They all make waves, every hour of every day all year.
The rowing clubs
The members of the rowing clubs in Venice are a diverse bunch, politically, but there are some very staunch supporters of the current municipal administration between them.
Many of the rowing clubs are also dependent on the good will of the city administration to be able to operate, in terms of access to boats, spaces and permissions.
This has to some extent kept politics out of events like the Regata Storica, but not this year.
Thanks to the indifference of the city administration of Luigi Brugnaro, the problem of the moto ondoso has only become worse.
The already tainted image of our mayor has got much more stained by the recent corruption allegations, which has landed one of his close associates in prison, and himself under investigation.
The opposition in the municipal council didn’t take their seats on the VIP platform, which, I believe, is a first.
Yesterday, many boats in the parade carried banners protesting the moto ondoso on the sides.
Tradition dictates that everybody raise their oars in salute when they pass the Machina — the VIP spectator platform on the central part of the Grand Canal — but this year few rowers did.
Brugnaro has never been popular in Venice — he was elected and reelected on the mainland — and now he is positively detested by a large part of the residents of Venice.
Unfortunately, being detested in Venice is not an impediment to winning more elections, as there are four times as many voters on the mainland as in Venice.
Participation
The photos I’ve used here are from past years. I didn’t go this year — and I believe a great many residents didn’t go either — because what is there to celebrate?
Venice is a dying city.
Not only is Venice dying, but the politicians who should care — and act — don’t. On the contrary, they’re the first to push the city over the brink into oblivion.
Rowing in Venice is now as dangerous as cycling on a motorway, so only the most foolhardy even try. I’ve tried myself being forcibly bounced out of the way in a narrow canal by a taxi.
The Venice of today is entirely unsuitable for its own traditions.
The only thing left is pageantry and avarice.
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