If Silvio Berlusconi takes the G8 leaders to meet those made homeless by April’s earthquake during next week’s summit at L’Aquila, he had better avoid a lady called Gaetana.

“We have a Prime Minister who sells smoke and dreams,” she said when we met at Piazza D’Armi, a former sports field that is now one of the “tent cities” that houses survivors of the earthquake. About 25,000 of the evacuees are under canvas, with the other 35,000 scattered in hotels along the Adriatic coast.

Does she believe his promise that those made homeless will be rehoused by the autumn? “No. All the money is going into the summit venue. What use is that to us?”

This week Mr Berlusconi made his 16th visit to L’Aquila since the earthquake struck on April 6. In earlier tours he took active charge of the relief effort and reassured the victims with jokes and promises of government aid. This time he inaugurated the upgraded L’Aquila airport next to the Finance Police barracks where the leaders of the world’s advanced economies will sleep, eat and debate issues from climate change to the global financial system.

The airport, he said, now has a high-tech radar control tower and runway illumination. “No other country reacts to natural disasters the way Italy does” he said. “The G8 is ready.”

Since the scandals broke over his private life more than two months ago, Mr Berlusconi has faced increasingly vocal protests. In the L’Aquila tent cities the anger is fuelled by resentment that, three months on, housing arrangements that were meant to be temporary are starting to look permanent, and hope of returning home any time soon is receding.

“We feel we have been abandoned by everybody,” said Massimo Cialente, the Mayor of L’Aquila. “After the G8 the spotlight will move away from us, and things will be even worse.” At the former sports field more than 1,600 people — including families with small children — live in rows of numbered blue tents provided by the civil protection agency.

“It is like a small town,” said Monica Ventura, a psychologist and civil protection volunteer. Residents, who all wear name badges, are not allowed to cook in the tents, and instead eat their free meals at fixed times in giant refectory tents.

Families have to share, with eight camp beds to each tent. There have been fights involving immigrants. The ground, alternately saturated because of mountain storms and baked hard by sweltering heat, continues to shake: last week there was a 4.5 tremor on the Richter scale, and yesterday another measuring 4.1, sending people running out of the tents in panic. Mr Berlusconi has given assurances that the summit venue is earthquake proof but helicopters are on standby to evacuate the leaders just in case.

“We feel abandoned,” said a woman called Valentina. “Our credit and bank cards are under the rubble, and we are not allowed into our houses to search for them. We are supposed to have been given ¤800 (£685) for three months as earthquake victims but I haven’t seen a cent.”

In addition to material loss and the restrictions of camp life, she said, there was “emotional and psychological damage — a lot suffer from post traumatic stress disorder”.

Not all residents share the bitterness. Graziella Tomei, who runs a hotel near the summit venue, said Mr Berlusconi’s decision to move the summit from Sardinia to L’Aquila after the earthquake was a “stroke of genius”.

Times Recommends

• No apology for Germany’s own Nazi victims
• Intricate web of fear and hope tying down deal
• Victims remembered a year after Mumbai attacks