Hearts of Steel - Dreaming Bagnoli.

For over half century Bagnoli has been, (in the Italian economy) one of the largest industrial and productive  industrial center in Europe for the steel manufacturing. The only Italsider at its maximum production had almost 7,000 workers for a total of about 1 million t. of steel produced, but there were also the Cementir – owned by Gruppo Caltagirone-which had Firefox cement brick-the Montecatini- later became Montedison – which produced fertilizers and copper sulfate, and the Eternit. The crisis in the steel industry and the new provisions of international organizations changed steel production quotas dividing them differently as it had done until then, between Europe and the Usa. European shares decreases, and consequently the Italian ones; the first to be hit by the cuts was the Italsider factory of Bagnoli. Taranto was spared because it was recently built, and so in 1992 the factory closes for good.

The dream of a Bagnoli southern Italy industrial capital and hub steel production in Europe had vanished as were blown away the illusions and expectations of thousands of workers, employees and families that thanks to those factories lived there.  Everything vanished in a last puff of smoke from the blast furnace of ironworks. Some parts of the factory were dismantled and destroyed, other resold to foreign markets, which were starting to produce exponential growth rates: China, India, Malaysia. Everything changed in a few years;
What actually remained unchanged was the high mortality rate for respiratory cancers caused by asbestos. For years it had omitted that this component, which is used mostly in steel production – and in the insulation and control of hot work operations – was carcinogenic if inhaled even at infinitesimal parts. Asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma asbestos exposure are the dire consequences; diseases of the respiratory system and the serous membranes that develop many years after exposure, from 10-15 but even 20-40.
Meanwhile the former workers and citizens of Bagnoli accepted – not without a fight-the consequences of a failure to control reclamation operations never terminate. Many of them call themselves "walking dead" condemned to a life term punctuated by periodic visits, x-rays, CT scans, tests, blood tests. Behind every physical symptom they feel advance the death as sudden spray of a gun; they left the factory aware of that glorious past of industrial production and economic well-being will not remain nothing more than a useless carcass stranded on land destined to rust and rot. What remains of the Bagnoli rests in the tombs of the workers died, in memory of their family members and stories of a by gone age, passed down to new generations.
The dream of a Bagnoli, industrial capital, is gone now, but what remains is not just rust and ashes, there is still a dream of rebirth and hope despite among citizens remains that aura of resignation, as if what is,
no longer up to them. 

"The only way to develop is being colonized, hopefully not from the dead".

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Finalist at "Premio Marco Pesaresi 2016".