The lady is of a certain age, has a No Navi flag on her shoulders and is going to the demonstration against the entry ticket. «What humiliation! The city where I was born, raised and where I persist in living has become a theme park, a museum with an entrance fee. Groups of kids who aren’t even from here stop you at the gates as you go to your house, to ask you for a… Querre code which, since I still have a cell phone with buttons, I don’t even know what it is.” And she adds: “The mayor hates us, there is no other explanation.”
FIRST DAY experimentation of the so-called «Venice access contribution». First day at the asylum. If the objective declared by the municipality was to “limit tourist flows”, we are just not there. Around one hundred thousand people arrived in the city yesterday morning after “logging in” to the site and downloading the access code. In fact, the system does not provide, as would be right to expect if the aim was really to limit the flow, a limit on revenue.
IT’S ENOUGH pay the famous 5 euros and you have the green light. But only a tenth of visiting tourists paid. The others are the so-called “exempt”: people who reside in Veneto or tourists with a hotel reservation, who enjoy a special free entry. Many other visitors disembarked from trains or buses and evaded controls by taking secondary streets. Or by simply refusing to show the code to the inspectors: around 200, mostly very young temporary workers, who, not belonging to the police force, have no authority to ask for documents. The result was a station square that looked like a madhouse, packed with people who didn’t know where to go, conductors who took their share of insults and tourists who wondered which circle of purgatory they had landed in.
A BRIDGE and a street further away, in Fondamenta Santa Chiara, half a thousand residents met to demonstrate against the ticket. «This city is not a zoo and we did not appear in Mayor Brugnaro’s tourist supermarket» shouts indignantly into the megaphone Ruggero Tallon, of the No Navi committee. «In Venice there are 2 thousand empty houses – continues Federica Toninelli of ASC, the Social Assembly for Housing -. The ticket only serves to pretend that something is being done. Mass tourism is countered by offering these houses and related services to those who would like to continue living in Venice. We must fight the wild tourist rentals that are emptying the city and the proliferation of hotels. All things that the mayor is careful not to do.” There are also some digs at the Democratic Party, which did not join the demonstration to participate in the institutional ones on 25 April. “We, on the other hand, prefer to do resistance rather than commemorate it!” underlined Federica Toninelli.
THE ATTEMPT IS REJECTED to enter the station square in procession from a cordon of police in riot gear, the demonstrators reached Campo Santa Margherita to the rhythm of music «to cheer up the city for which Brugnaro would like to give the funeral». «We are preparing an appeal to the TAR against this medieval measure – explained Andreina Zitelli of Ambiente Venezia who spent half a morning at the station explaining in English to tourists that they could go straight on, without giving credit to the supposed controllers -. The ticket violates the principle of free movement and the obligation on the part of Venetian residents to demonstrate their status is also a violation of rights.” «This measure is just smoke and mirrors – commented the opposition councilor Gianfranco Bettin, Green Europe -. The municipality has been accused by UNESCO for its failure to manage tourism and this ticket only serves to make people believe that they are doing something. Meanwhile, the administration leaves the Pellicani amendment pending which would allow the municipality to intervene in the concession of tourist rentals, limiting them”.
AT THE TICKET entrance, the Venetians attempted to respond using irony. Arci printed a fake passport, which she gave to the visitors. Inside, article 16 of the Constitution on the free movement of citizens is cited. Even funnier is the fake ticket printed by the ASC which follows the colors and fonts used by the municipality for the information campaign on the ticket. On the back we read: «The ticket is valid to visit the entire Venice Museum area. Do not go over the fences, they could constitute a danger. Please do not feed the Venetians or throw objects at them, even to attract their attention.”
