Once upon a time, somewhere in the flat west of Florence, there was a large abandoned farmhouse, once beautiful and valuable but now ruined and invaded by brambles and brushwood.
One day someone buys those ruins and commissions a young technician to carry out the rebuilding. A complex job, so the young technician prudently presents a draft of what he’s conceiving to the municipality in advance to find out if it is feasible. The answer is ok, but beware: the existing ruins must be maintained and can only be integrated where necessary. In other words: you can’t tear down everything and rebuild. Is that clear? Yes, it’s clear, goodbye.
Works begins, some time passes. Then, one day, a police report lands on the desk of the town planning officer: in a casual survey was discovered that all the walls had been razed down and completely rebuilt, absolutely the whole. Exactly what should not have been done.
Tsk tsk…
Result: hefty fine (many hundreds of thousands of euros); order to demolish the new building because completely non-compliant (many more hundreds of thousands of euros); impossibility to build again the pre-existing volume since the demolition caused the lost of all rights on the area, now only provided as rural use in the City Master Plan in a hydrogeological constraint (further hundreds of thousands of euros of damage); devastating legal struggles (some more pennies)…
From the construction site, a bureaucratic and legal shock wave of the utmost intensity spread to offices, professional studios and courtrooms. A devastating war breaks out: the owners have to pay, but they claim against the builders and the technician. The builders, with specious arguments, call themselves out, saying in short that they obeyed what ordered. The spotlight shift to the young technician, probablely the least responsible for the disaster: in fact, the company had most convenience in rebuilding everything completely, and so the owners because the work would have been faster and the costs much lower. They were probably both confident that the place was out of the way and that, if everything was done quickly, nobody would notice anything. But instead…
So the young technician, who probably faced a fait accompli and did not protect himself in advance in any way, was lost.
Perhaps he could quickly reach Patagonia.
Postilla
It is never a good idea to defy the law thinking you can get away with it because you think the odds are in your favor. Here’s another experience.
Years ago, a young couple, in order to escape the city, bought an old abandoned farmhouse. The place is definitely off the beaten paths, in the middle of a wood and reachable only by a path that is moreover interrupted by a landslide that formed a large pool.
Works begin. Next to the house there is a small outbuilding where you can barely stand. The owners ask the architect:
– Could we raise it a little?
– Impossible: it’s not allowed.
– Don’t be fussy: who could see? We’re out of this world here.
The request is repeated. Finally, the architect is about to give in.
But just a little before the fatal step, one morning, among the trees of that remote wood, silent presences materialize. Gentlemen approached the house with measured but firm steps and introduced themselves:
– Good morning, I am the mayor, we are planning officers, I am the chief of the technical office, I command the urban police, I represent the forestry, and so on.
Surely that morning nobody was sitting in the Municipality.
– What are you doing? Show us your licenses please. Well, let’s see…
– All right, goodbye.
– Just a moment, please!
From the owners’ and the architect’s mouths some rather disjointed words erupted, that in substance meant a question:
– What the hell are you doing down here? Are you on the trail of a kidnapping? Is counterterrorism involved? Are you looking for drug refineries?
– No, we’re checking out all the springs of the municipal water supply, and since we were passing near here….
Bingo.
