When I was still working in Sicily as a journalist, and the news was scarce, one
of the editorial habits was "to call a random mayor of the Madonie". We did itbecause we were convinced, often rightly so, that it was enough to talk to eachother a little to discover some flaw that he or she wanted to keep hidden fromus. It was necessary to tickle the ego of these institutional figures a bit, torefer to their role as "sentinel of the territory" (how much they liked thisexpression) and down to confessions and stories. There was one, however, whodidn't even need to be stimulated, indeed sometimes he even called him to offerus some scoop: it was the mayor of Collesano Giovanni Battista Meli, even now atthe helm of the Municipality. In Meli, routine is obviously boring, for thisreason, they say, "he is a volcano of ideas". One of his own has recently beeninvented: a beautiful cable car linking the villages of Collesano, Campofelice diRoccella and Isnello. An idea that the madoniepress website has defined as"revolutionary and futuristic" and which has been better articulated in a tender,published in the Official Gazette and in the European Gazette, to launch theinevitable "contest of ideas". At the moment it is known that the estimated costfor the construction of the work, including security costs, is just over 47million euros net of VAT and available sums. But who should get this money out ofit, given that the Madonie Municipalities certainly aren't sailing in gold?Mystery. What is known, as stated by Mayor Meli, is that "management will look tothe private sector who will certainly be able to evaluate the great opportunitiesthat the cable car will be able to offer".Then there is another project which in these days is causing a lot of discussionamong the Madonite populations: it concerns the astronomical observatory onMufara, which the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI)would like to build in the heart of the Parco delle Madonie, in an integralprotection zone within a protected area. Not that this has ever stopped voraciousappetites - see the case of Muos built within a Site of Community Interest - butit was legitimate to expect some more caution. And instead the project goesahead, by 12 May the Sicilian parliament and the park authority should give theirassent for the construction of an observatory for which the overbuilding of 800square meters is planned and the construction of a building with a volume of over3,540 cubic meters, on the top of Mount Mufara. Opposing this project is a groupof associations, from Legambiente to WWF to Italia Nostra. Giuseppe Mogavero,president of the Gal Hassin d'Isnello astronomical observatory, affirms that theMufara sky is "one of the best astronomical observation sites in Europe". Whilesupporters of the work add that the new construction would boost the localeconomy, with positive effects on tourism.Both projects, the observatory and the cable car, despite the diversity of thecharacteristics of each, betray the same predatory structure of the territories.Tourism, for the inland areas and the towns that are increasingly depopulating inSicily, is the pill with which you try to gild any top-down project, whichinstead of starting from the wishes and needs of those who then in theterritories he lives there tries to have negative externalities accepted, underthe banner of "we do it for you". In this sense, the opposition that can emergefrom the Madonie can be a useful litmus test, above all, of the ability tore-appropriate the imaginary. Because tourism itself has become an induced need,desired and invoked by large sections of the population, the easiest tool tochase after only to regret it after just a few years. As happened, for example,in nearby Cefalù, for years hostage to hit-and-run tourism and unlivable for morethan half a year. The tourism of the cable cars, of the ski resorts, of theastronomical observatories, in a definition "tourism of the villages" has takenon a real character of cultural hegemony. Countries think that they have tobecome attractive, that they have to compete for the attention of tourists whoimagine themselves to be wealthy (and often have their ass in the rags) and thatthey have to plunder those who arrive. In this sense, traders play a fundamentalrole, builders of a conservative and repressive ideological apparatus based onthe decorum of historic centres, on the private appropriation of common spaces(tables and dehors instead of roads which with Covid have become permanent), onthe disproportionate offer of food, on the denial of squares as meeting and breakplaces and transformed into passageways from one shop to another.They are "ideas", if we can define them that way, which are floundering in a messof suggestions whose leading exponent, just to clarify, is the current Ministerfor Tourism Daniela Santanché, who not by chance recently said that "we need tofocus on events, sporting events, festivals and cultural events in the villages,which are our wealth". In short, culture and sport and sociality lose theirconnotations and become exclusively tools at the service of tourist capital. Justas, after all, they would like to make plans on the Madonie Mountains. It must beclear that tourism increases the isolation of countries and that it constitutesthe denial of necessary services to countries. Unbearable short circuits would becreated: trains granted exclusively on weekends, with the aim of pouring riversof people who, like wild boars, feed on the roots; guided visits to places madeghost, where the attraction is the uncontaminated, that is to say the absence ofpeople; futuristic systems increasingly disconnected from reality. To then end upwondering: how do we repopulate the Madonie? It's a story we've already seen,let's not repeat it.https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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