“50 inhabitants and 50 migrants? An ethnic substitution”. This is supported by around fifty residents of Marliana who protested in front of the town hall yesterday morning, complete with signs hanging and banners held in their hands. The bone of contention is the institutions’ decision to create a CAS (migrant reception center) at the former Hotel Europa. It was a real outdoor assembly in which Alessio Bartolomei, councilor for civil protection of the municipality of Pistoia, also took part. The residents also ask again and forcefully for the general practitioner, who has been absent in the village for some time: “We have been without a doctor for months”.
The former Hotel Europa was proposed to the Prefecture as suitable for the reception of asylum seekers, during this summer, by Ospita srl, engaged in the management of the reception service in the Pistoia area and, for several years, in other Italian provinces . The structure, which has remained inactive since 2017, is the subject of an enforcement procedure by the Court of Pistoia and, over time, nine failed auction sales attempts have been made. One of the souls of the protest is Massimiliano Danesi, a minority city councilor who, after leaving the ‘Noi per Marliana’ civic list, is now part of a mixed group. “I want to create a citizens’ committee – he said a few weeks ago – that can defend our mountain from the wicked choices of politics”. Protest took place just yesterday.
The mayor Federico Bruschi was not present: “I learned about it from the flyers, then an opposition councilor also notified me. But I was engaged in the traditional ceremony organized by the prefect of Pistoia for the commemoration of the fallen. Furthermore, the town hall on Saturday It’s closed. In any case, in my opinion, to avoid inflaming tempers it’s better to stay out in these cases.” However, Bruschi does not shy away from making a comment: “For clarity, the residents in the registry are 106. The ratio of 1 to 2 is not acceptable in any case. We cannot avoid a duty of welcome but the risk is of exceeding the ceiling set by the same regulations. At the same time, there is no correlation between the problem of migrants and the absence of the doctor. In any case, I have been working on this second aspect for months and I have also proposed, given the arrival of the migrants, to assign a doctor who can think of both foreigners and our citizens. The situation is unsustainable, a doctor is needed and the solution is not to assign a doctor who works far from Marliana, with a clinic that covers 1800 patients and a lot of others. villages”.
Giovanna La Porta
