To emerge from the ruins Greece must shift focus to rebuilding and reform

Centuries of rule by outsiders have left a disconnect between citizens and the state — and in the struggle between modernism and myth, the latter triumphed, writes Adam LeBor

SITTING at the café of the Technopolis cultural centre in downtown Athens, cigarillo in hand, Antonis Kafetzopoulos, one of Greece’s best-known actors, gives a quick history of Greece’s travails.

“Greece is a failed state and has been since our independence in the 1830s. We have not managed to build he kind of state we wanted. France had a revolution and an Enlightenment. But we didn’t follow that model. We always tried to compromise between the old Ottoman establishment and modern Europe,” he explains.