That subtlety in a decree that excludes soft drink activities



[ad_1]

San Francesco, take care of him. The last miracle that in the shadow of the Sacred Convent they ask the saint to Assisi It is to make Conte, Franceschini and the entire government understand that the friars, not the merchants, took the vow of poverty. Yes, because Covid has not only eliminated the business of bars, restaurants and clothing stores. It didn’t just hit the red areas. But it has also dealt a (almost) fatal blow to the shops of the cities of art and religion that without trips, tourists and pilgrimages remain dry. “This year I had 80% less turnover than last year”, he tells us Michela Cuppoloni, owner of a souvenir shop in the center. The problem is that Assisi, like many other realities, has been excluded from any refund. Nothing 200% of the turnover. No lost funds. Without “firepower” of continuous memory. And so merchants, on the one hand, pray that Italy’s patron saint, puppies, poets, animals, environmentalists and, coincidentally, even merchants can get them some money from the government. And meanwhile they protest.

Last night for the third time a group gathered in the square. “In March – explains Michela – we received like all 600 euros. But since then we haven’t seen anything. ” Technically Assisi, as well as Loreto, Cascia, San Giovanni Rotondo, Pompeii and other “sanctuaries” that live in tourismI’m not in the red zone. Therefore, stores of all kinds can remain open and the government has not included them in the various decrees. “But if I open and no one is around, what work to do?” With narrow regional borders and international flights that no longer make a stopover, farewell to the tourist coaches and the crowds of North Americans attracted by the sacredness of these walls perched at the foot of the Subasio. Souvenir shops under the Dpcm may remain open, but who do they sell their products to if no one can go into town? It would be like keeping the shopping centers open but closing the roads to get to them. “Our activities – explains Michela – do not have an exact legal connotation. The government was based on payments ateco codes, and here in town we all have it differently even though we sell the same things. The fact is, staying open without customers would only be a cost. So I stay closed. “

The merchants of Assisi say they are a “forgotten category”. And they go out to the streets “through the small historic centers that live exclusively from tourism.” In the August decree, at the insistent request of Minister Franceschini, the government had planned 500 million to be delivered to tour operators affected by the decline in visitors. Nice job. Too bad that only provincial capitals or metropolitan cities with a high rate of tourists can access it. At the end there are 29, including Syracuse, Matera, Pisa, Rimini. But not Assisi and other smaller cities. It does not matter if Assisi was the cradle of Saint Chiara and Saint Francis, it does not matter if it is the city of La Paz, home to two papal basilicas that have always been a world destination for pilgrimages, a visiting place for popes, heads of state, Kings and Queens. Letter sings: it is not the capital, so it is without contributions. So thousands of families are now “fleeing”: “I am lucky because I do not have to pay the rent for the store – says Michela – But here is a girl who is desperate”.

The good or the bad is that Assisi in 2019 it welcomed about 5 million people. Of these, 1.3 million were housed in accommodation facilities. The ratio between residents and tourists (which is one of the criteria of the August decree for the provision of soft drinks) reaches the figure of 1 to 45, much more than the limits set by the legislative decree. For Istat it is one of the 50 cities with the most visitors, even more than those admitted to contributions. But you get nothing.

In a recent motion, the City Council asked the mayor to speak for Conte, Gualtieri, Franceschini and so on so that at least in the Budget Law there are resources for the “Sanctuary Cities”, that is to say “those small and medium municipalities that, with their places of worship and devotion, destination of international pilgrimage, give prestige and relevance to the entire Italian nation. ” The objective is to obtain a non-refundable grant, because Covid has canceled an entire sector that runs the risk of not recovering. “They have not even taken the IMU from us,” Michela concludes. “The State either does not realize it or does not want to realize that this is how we are going to ruin ourselves.” Unless San Francisco thinks so.

[ad_2]