First the offenses aggravated by discrimination towards his disability, then the apologies from the management of Rho Fiera. “You’re disabled, stay at home.” That’s what they were told Giulia Lamarca, 32 years old, influencer from Turin who, on April 18, had gone to the Salone del Mobile in Milan for work and reported what she had suffered by publishing a video on her Instagram page with 568 thousand followers. Giulia doesn’t walk. In 2011 she was paralyzed after a car accident. On social media she raises awareness on the issue. But this was not the reason for her presence at Rho Fiera.
The walk around the parking lot
«Me, my husband Andrea and one of our partners – says Giulia – were arrived at the Fair to create digital content. I didn’t want discriminatory acts to be associated with our work. For this reason, I thought about it for a few days, then I decided to publish the video.” Giulia came from Turin; the queue to reach the Salone del Mobile was already from the motorway exit. «When we arrived at the Fair – continues the digital creator – we started to go around the car parks, which are four or five. There were valets and staff directing traffic. At the first one, we pointed out that we had a disabled ticket and we were told that the parking (disabled) was closed. So also in the following ones. Yet, as I show in the video, they could be seen from the main street free reserved seats. And I didn’t understand why they didn’t let us in.”
He screams at her
Lamarca gets no explanations. And, at a certain point, in the penultimate car park, after an hour and a half spent looking for a parking space, the husband gets out of the car. AND he is attacked by the parking attendant who shouts. “You’ve been breaking the fuck for three hours,” the Rho Fiera employee tells her. «Andrea had shown him the free places for disabled people – says the influencer -. If we had been tourists we would have left. But we had arrived for work. And, surely, I won’t have been the only disabled one. But we were attacked and I was told that I should have stayed at home.”
The police and the apologies
Giulia calls the police, who suggest you file a complaint. Only at the end does the last valet manage to find space for his car. “I begged him,” Lamarca explains, realizing that if she had been alone she would have had the worst of the attacker. «My husband got out of the car-she specifies she-she. It’s different dealing with a standing person. Of course, I can’t run away and run.” You notified Fiera Rho e of the incident the press office responded by saying that they understand that the woman was accompanied in the nearest car park and that “from our point of view we have not recorded any problems”. Before the publication of the video on social media, «an apology was received from the management of the Fair, but I’m not interested – he concludes -. What matters more is that similar incidents don’t happeneven more so in one of the largest fairs in Europe, certainly not the sausage festival.”
