Surreal Sunday in Mondragone, with half-empty establishments and free beaches, parking lots available everywhere and no queues on the roads. At the former Cirio buildings, where a Coronavirus outbreak was discovered involving 43 residents, mostly Bulgarians of Roma ethnicity (all asymptomatic), there is calm waiting for Matteo Salvini’s arrival scheduled for tomorrow.
On one of the five buildings subject to sanitary cordon, the one where mostly Italians reside, the banner still stands with the writing “Salvini put order, it takes p ….”. A few hundred meters away, on the waterfront, the weather warms up if you talk to the managers of the seaside resorts. They complain about cancellations for season tickets for July and August, which arrived in just seven days. Sunday 21 June, when the outbreak had not yet emerged, the factories were full, and there was no place in the parking lots.
“It seems a century has passed – says Sabrina Nugnes, manager of the ‘Lido Medusa’ – people are calling me to cancel, others ask me if” it is possible to come to Mondragone ‘, as if the city were closed. I have to admit that my colleagues and I are a little bit upset with the press, for certain titles that have triggered panic and that do not reflect reality in any way, given that in the ex Cirio buildings just 43 infections were identified 700 tampons “.” Yet the city is deserted – continues the owner of the bathing establishment – after months of lockdowns and sacrifices, if we had known, we would never have reopened “.” As for the problems with the Bulgarians – he adds – they are they don’t want to integrate in any way. In Mondragone there are communities of Poles, Albanians and Ukrainians, all are now our fellow citizens, and there has never been any problem with anyone “.
On the beach, both in the factories and in the free ones, there are almost exclusively Mondragone residents. However, there is a family from Naples with umbrella and deck chairs. “Before we came we got well informed, and obviously we didn’t read newspapers or social networks – says Salvatore – so I understood that there is no point in being afraid. There is not all this health emergency, so I decided to bring mine here wife and young children, as I have been doing for years. ” At the “Lido Sinuessa”, Aldo, from Mondragonese with a grandmother of Russian origin deported to Auschwitz, is sitting at the bar, and angrily watches what is happening. “Mondragone has always been a multiethnic city, as my personal story shows, what is happening with the Bulgarians is only the fault of the latter, who do not want to adapt to civil rules.
We have welcomed everyone, but having a degraded and unregulated ghetto in the center is something that can no longer be tolerated. We have a thousand-year history, with a submerged Roman city such as Sinuessa, food excellence, such as mozzarella and Falerno wine, a clean sea, since purifiers work very well here. Seeing the empty beaches on a Sunday in late June – he concludes – hurts a lot. “
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