The Italian connection

IT MAY not become quite as iconic as the telephone booth in Local Hero, and not everyone is entirely enthusiastic about it, but Barga, the picturesque walled hill town in Tuscany where it’s said that anyone who speaks English does so with a Glasgow accent, has just taken delivery of a vintage red telephone box from Edinburgh.

The bright scarlet edifice was installed at the weekend on the bridge which joins Barga Vecchia, the old walled town, and the newer district of Barga Giardino. It is a gift from one of the town’s vast Scottish diaspora, Edinburgh fish-and-chip shop owner and hotelier Mauro Cecchini, who for two decades kept the kiosk in his garden at Lasswade, Midlothian.

Such has been the degree of immigration that an estimated 60 per cent of Barga’s population boast relatives in Scotland – particularly in Glasgow, Paisley, Largs and Saltcoats. In the summer holiday season especially, the voices echoing through the narrow streets and piazzas of the old town can sound strangely familiar to a visiting Scot.

Among those present at the phone booth’s “opening” ceremony was the town’s mayor, Umberto Seren, whose father used to work in Glasgow’s famous Savoy Caf, run by the Pieri family, also from Barga. However, not everyone in this most Scottish of Italian towns is enamoured with the box.

Some have pointed to its British royal crest and asked what is Scottish about it; others object to its prominent situation. “Accept the gift but stick it in the corner of a parking lot,” writes one irate blogger on www.barganews.com, the town’s English-language online newspaper. “Whatever next? A fish and chip shop in Piazz’ Angelio?” demands another.

In fact, the folk of Barga don’t turn their noses up at fish and chips, far from it. They hold an annual fish-and-chip festival – the Sagra di Pesce e Patate – in celebration of that alien delicacy which made the livings, occasionally even the fortunes, of so many emigrant families.

Mauro Cecchini, 75, is delighted to see the box, which he acquired for 150 at a Boy Scout auction 20 years ago, installed in the town for which he nurses a huge affection. His family came to Scotland from Barga in the early years of the 20th century, originally to Glasgow. As a child Cecchini was on holiday in Barga when the Second World War broke out, and he was stuck there for the duration. Now retired, he spends up to six months of the year in the town, saying: “Half of me belongs to here.” He insists that the prominent bridge site is the best place for the phone box. “If you put it in the centre of the old Barga, not everybody would see it.”

For many years, Cecchini kept the kiosk in his garden – complete with a working phone connected to his house. “I’ve had good use of it, and I hope Barga does as well.”

Football star Johnny Moscardini is probably Barga’s most famous son. Born to Italian parents in Falkirk in 1897, he was the only Scots-born player to turn out for an Italian national side. Continuing the Scottish connection, a contemporary Barga resident is the renowned painter John Bellany, who has likened the warmth of the locals to that of the fisherfolk of Port Seton, East Lothian, where he grew up.

The town’s most recent Scots resident has been the Dunkeld piper and pipe-maker Hamish Moore, who recently returned home after spending the past nine months as Barga’s musician-in-residence. He described the experience as “one of the most enjoyable and privileged experiences of my life”, although nothing quite prepared him for the old town centre at the height of the summer season. “It’s like walking down Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday afternoon,” he says.

While the town’s latest Scottish import is currently minus a working phone, this could change, says Keane, the enigmatically single-named editor of barganews.com. He explains that it may end up as a direct line to the local equivalent of Santa Claus, La Befana, a kind-hearted witch who brings children presents every 6 January. “During the season here,” says Keane, “an old woman dresses up as La Befana, so the idea is that maybe the telephone box will have a direct line to her.”

Barga’s children, at least, may yet welcome their latest Scottish connection.