(ANSA) - The wife of Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi caused a stir on Tuesday by announcing during a visit to Naples that the smartest and nicest Italians came from the south.
"People in the south are nicer and more intelligent," Franca Ciampi said as she and her husband visited a museum in the southern city.
She went on to explain that her love of the Italian south dated back to a trip she made to Naples with her father during her youth. "Ever since that first journey I have loved the south deeply," she said.
The first lady's apparent preference for sunny southerners shocked Italy's reform minister, Roberto Calderoli, who is a leading member of the Northern League party. The League, whose electoral base is in the north, has battled for years to win greater autonomy for northern regions and has traditionally boasted about their hard work and uprightness.
"I sincerely hope that this remark was never pronounced by the lady in question. She is the wife of a president who represents the whole nation and all its population," Calderoli said in Rome.
"Everyone is free to love the south but no one can claim that part of the population is 'nicer' and 'more intelligent'. This would be racism towards the rest of the population," he continued.
Back in Naples, Signora Ciampi was pressed by reporters for clarification of her earlier remark. "I was talking about the qualities of southern people," she said, adding that she sent an "affectionate" hug to her fellow women all over the nation "from the Alps to Sicily".
