“If you are in Palermo, you are a Palermitan": An Interview with Mayor Leoluca Orlando

Leoluca Orlando was born in 1947 in the Sicilian city of Palermo. After studying in Heidelberg, Germany, and Palermo, he worked as a professor of public law at the University of Palermo. In 1985, Palermo’s city council elected Orlando for the first time as Mayor. Currently, he serves his fifth term. In between, he also had seats in the European and the Italian Parliaments, and he served as opposition leader in the Sicilian Parliament. In his first term as Mayor, he took up the fight against the Sicilian mafia; today he fights against racism and the restrictive migration policies of Italy’s national government and the European Union.