Savona, a city in continuous decline (waiting for the eastern waterfront) – FREE MEN

Two commercial ports close to us which, like the other important commercial ports of the northern Mediterranean, such as Nice, Barcelona and Valencia, just to name three from a long list, have seized the great opportunity to enhance their old commercial port with the aim , on the one hand, to return the beautiful vintage, even medieval, docks to the cities and citizens, eliminating the old customs railings that prevented access, and on the other to make a significant contribution to the economy and internationalization of the city , as well as numerous highly professionalizing employment opportunities for young people.

While the entire western coastal world has invested and still invests in the large-scale nautical sector (a prestigious sector where the construction of mega yachts is constantly on the rise: just think that, if a super rich person today wants to buy a super yacht worth 200 million euro has to wait 5 years before being able to see his dream come true, the European shipyards are so full of orders) in Savona we continue to talk about assistance.

Savona has now become an assisted city at the level of the most assisted southern cities, where the only economy is that of pensions.

In the list of 39 cities in which there are more pensioners than active workers there is also Savona, the only province in the North together with Asti and Imperia, while, when I was a student in the 1960s, Savona was the second city in Italy for wealth per capita, after Trieste.

I think no reader will believe that Savona had to suffer such a disheartening decline due to a divine curse.

In truth, the gods of Olympus do not exist, but there are men of flesh and blood, appointed by the citizens to administer the city, who over the years have destroyed not only the city from an economic point of view, but also from the point of view of its beauty and image.

In the 1980s, with the end of the steel industry and the end of the coal era, there remained the enormous spaces left by those industries that were now too polluting and no longer productive, spaces also requested by entrepreneurs in the new large-scale nautical sector such as Wally Yachts , which could be the new economic driving force for the city and above all to give the new generations a possible high-tech job (see the cities of Genoa and Livorno just mentioned by the national newspapers).

Just think, just to give an example, that Azimut yachts are built in Avigliana, the metropolitan city of Turin, and transported by truck to Savona, where there is the sea, to be delivered to customers.

Despite the strong demand, especially from the USA, Azimut cannot build larger yachts, because, for portals in Savona, they would not pass through the tunnels of the Turin-Savona motorway.

Savona boasts a historical shipbuilding past even superior to that of Genoa, just think that in the ancient Savona arsenal (buried in concrete at night to build the car parks of the Crescent eco-monster) already in 1400 they were building warships larger than those built in the arsenal of Genoa; not to mention that, in more recent times, the first mega-yacht (at the time) in the world was launched in Savona by the Campanella shipyard in 1975.

But while in other port cities the entrepreneurs were not only not hindered but helped to create wealth and employment, in our city, on the land that had given the citizens wealth and employment, the only thought was to carry out building speculation; land, where economy and jobs had been created for a hundred years and which had led Savona to be part of the mythical industrial triangle, were used to build horrible eco-monsters with the sole speculative purpose.

Furthermore, with all these thousands of cubic meters built with urban planning charges collected, I have always wondered how it was possible that the left-wing councils were able to leave around 100 million in debt to the centre-right administration that succeeded them in 2016: a topic that would have been interesting to explore further, but which apparently no one has ever thought of pursuing.

The initiative of the only true Mayor, coincidentally from the center right, (I mean the late Engineer Francesco Gervasio), who had clear ideas and who despite the strong opposition of the left (whose watchword at the time was: ” We don’t want to create the living room for the rich Milanese!”) had transformed a previously dirty and degraded area into the currently most beautiful area of ​​our city, namely the old dock, was to further extend the moorings towards the former cable cars to accommodate very large boats larger.

If Mayor Gervasio had not lost the elections, not only would he not have allowed real estate speculation in the industrial areas, but, by extending the moorings, he would have created a large marina, capable of accommodating super yachts measuring over 100 metres, 10 times larger than small boats 10 meters that moor in the old dock, also considering that the then President of the Port Authority Eng. Sciutto had the same vision.

We are talking about 26 years ago, 26 years before what the mayors of Genoa and Livorno are preparing to do today, considering that then the tourist ports of Imperia, Loano, Varazze, Genoa Airport, Spezia Mirabello did not exist and that the Port of Montecarlo had not yet extended the docks towards the sea, thus tripling the moorings existing at the time.

On the contrary, it was decided to moor one or two mega passenger ships a day or two a week which, in my opinion, beyond a few coffees and Chinese junk sold by Bangladeshis in via Paleocapa, do not bring much more to the city, whose decline is confirmed by the numbers, which, as always, are stubborn.

While our region sees an increase in employment in 2023 in the provinces of Genoa of 11,314 units, of Imperia of 1,227 units and of La Spezia of 5,991 units, in Savona there are 1,629 fewer employed compared to the previous year, perhaps net of a few more Bengali sellers.

Furthermore, the province of Savona lost 10,444 inhabitants in the period 2018-2023.

Data provided by the unions themselves, friends of those Mayors who have strongly contributed to the decay of the Savonese economy today and who at that time did little to hinder this wicked policy.

Unfortunately I must admit, with great regret, that, as already said, since the Gods of Olympus do not exist and we live in a democracy, where administrators are elected by vote, it is perfectly useless to complain about the fact that young people are forced to emigrate from city ​​to find work elsewhere and the city is becoming more and more southernized.

The proverb “Let him who is the cause of his own evil cry for himself” cannot have a better response to the vertical decline of our dear city, for which we old romantics and true Savonese cannot help but feel sorry…and suffer.