On the night between 16 and 17 May 2023, Gianni Parmiani goes to collect his 93-year-old father, Giuseppe, from the family home where he lives alone – on Parmiani mill – after the evacuation order from the Municipality of Lugo. The Santerno river risks flooding and the mill is located along the embankment, on via Fiumazzo between Ca’ di Lugo and San Lorenzo. A few hours later, before dawn, the river actually floods, right next to the Parmianis’ brick house, destroying a good part of it.
The demolition of the former Parmiani mill
A few days later, an ordinance from the mayor of Lugo, Davide Ranalli, invites the Parmiani to consent to the demolition of their house: space is needed to rebuild the embankment. Giuseppe Parmiani signs and the house is demolished without the Parmianis being able to go inside to recover the memories of three generations, the furniture, clothes and props of Gianni’s theater company, which had set up its warehouse in the rooms of the old mill .
“I only heard him cry the night he signed to have the house torn down,” says his son.
A couple of weeks later comes the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella to shake hands with the 93-year-old from Lugo whose house saved the entire town of San Lorenzo from the water and which was demolished, despite a good half having survived. «Perhaps the president thought he was faced with an angry, complaining and desperate old man. Instead I am proud of my house. It was heroic,” the elderly man told a reporter. Giuseppe Parmiani will also end up in Ansa’s list of ‘people of the year’.
Then nothing more.
«There was talk of creating an area of remembrance in the spot where the mill was, where to put the old millstones that were saved and a commemorative plaque. But then We have heard nothing more from the institutions. We have received a lot of solidarity from the community, including economic solidarity and I am grateful for that. But unfortunately I cannot say the same about the institutions. I realize that ours is a complicated situation and I’m not asking for preferential lanes, but I believe that after a year it would be right to receiveand fair compensation for the loss of your home» comments his son Gianni, who, to exorcise the loss of the mill, made a theatrical monologue out of it.
A year later
Today, one year later, Giuseppe Parmiani has still not received reimbursement for the demolition of his house. The land on which the family mill stood essentially no longer exists today. The embankment was thickened, to the point of occupying a large part of the Parmiani property. «The land is actually still ours and according to the land register the house is still standing. We even risk having to pay the IMU”, explains Gianni Parmiani.
Giuseppe Parmianiwho will turn 94 in June, today he lives in Lugoin a small house on the ground floor just opposite that of his son Gianni, for rent. Since the lease was signed, according to the state bureaucracy, he he appears to have returned home and has stopped receiving the independent accommodation contribution (cas).
«It’s a shame that today he is forced to pay rent, whereas until a year ago he lived in his own house. A house that was effectively expropriated from him by the State, but without any payment or transfer of ownership”, reiterates his son.
«In the emergency – he continues – everything seemed legitimate and we waited patiently and confidently for our turn to come. After a year, however, that moment has not yet arrived. My father is almost 94 years old and I believe it is right that he receives adequate compensation for what he has lost. The satisfaction of having shaken hands with the President is not enough, I believe we also need facts. I don’t know what he would do if my brother and I weren’t there to help him, the state doesn’t give him anything.”
«They often ask me if I’m not angry, I reply that it’s useless and I don’t understand who I should feel angry towards. Towards the river? No, nature simply took back what was its own from the beginning. Towards the State? That’s not my way. But I certainly cannot deny that, after a year, I feel bitterness in seeing how my father has been abandoned by the institutions”, he concludes.
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