Pantelleria, villas with swimming pools and tourist companies built inside the national park

The Green MP reports Angelo Bonelliin a written question to the Minister of the Environment: “There are new building transformation interventions underway in the protected area of ​​the island of Pantelleria, of even larger dimensions than those feared in the three collaborative requests addressed to the Park Authority ”.

The cassation lawyer Gianni Lanzigeran environmentalist from Bolzano, former member of parliament, a dammuso of property on the island, explains what the ongoing building transformation consists of having observed it: “Since July 2016, since the president Sergio Mattarella established the National Park, interventions have alternated without interruption. This happens in practice: a company makes a request to the Park Authority to expand a building for agricultural use, necessary to cultivate the famous basil in the area, and with the completion of the works the construction sites reveal villas of considerable proportions and buildings with tourist purposes built above a territory that should undergo rigorous conservation”.

The lawyer Lanziger is the sponsor, on behalf of citizens and holidaymakers “who love the island”, of the “collaborative requests” sent to the institution on three subsequent occasions, but the response of the authority called to preserve the area intended for Park (the 6,560 protected hectares, over half of the island, divided into three zones depending on the value and the degree of possible anthropization) up to now has been this: “We can’t deal with it, we are significantly behind in the paperwork”.

“Recent constructions unrelated to the island”

In the memory delivered by the environmentalists of Pantelleria, the situation is represented as follows: “Anyone who finds himself traveling along the roads, even internal ones, of the Pantelleria National Park and crossing zones 1 and 2, realizes that the natural landscape is increasingly frequently interrupted from recent constructions just completed or still under construction which, due to size, layout of the building, access roads, parking spaces, appear foreign to the typology of rural buildings in Pantelleria”. The buildings, some even measuring 600 square meters and with an adjoining swimming pool, “are real residential villas, tourist accommodation facilities or, again, commercial companies, all surrounded by masonry works that simulate dry stone walls, but which in reality develop a ‘impressive concrete work located in the most valuable parts of the Park and, when possible, on the upper profile of the hilly design.’

The concrete villas are masked by a veneer of volcanic stone, “and are clearly visible even from afar due to their obvious residential function”. They are built, it is claimed, in a panoramic position so as to enjoy maximum visibility of the horizon, sometimes as far as the sea. “No one could believe that the island is, in this way, developing an agro-forestry-pastoral economy consistent with its heroic traditions of olive, caper or sapling vine culture”.

The building situation with the establishment of the National Park would be significantly burdened: “The state of the places reveals an anthropic load that was completely unimaginable at the time of the previous regional management of the oriented nature reserve”, we read. It was called that when it was under regional authority.

Commissioner Cucci’s CV

Last August 31, the Ministry of the Environment appointed the journalist as commissioner of the Pantelleria Park Authority Italo Cuccinow 84 years old, former director of Corriere dello Sport Stadium he was born in Sporty Guerin. Resident on the island since 1989, over the years Cucci has built the right curriculum to lead one of the twenty-five national reserves, moreover the latest established in the country. “Right-wing anarchist”, as he calls himself, he directed the sports magazine The recordcreated for the Asi sports association by the current undersecretary for the environment Claudio Barbaro, and has covered twelve World Cups and six Olympics as a reporter. All this has guaranteed him, yes, “qualified experience in the environmental field”.

With his inauguration, Cucci offered ironies on climate change worthy of a denier and said that, after all, on the island of Pantelleria there is not much to do other than give order to the many requests that arrive in the Municipality and the Park Authority: we need to line up the building permits and get them going.

The director of the national park is the biologist Sonia Anelli, biodiversity expert, long-time curator of environmental projects in the Emilian Apennines, often financed by the European Union. She is entrusted with the protected area plan, which is currently being developed. In general, director Anelli is considered the driving force of the organization and the point of reference for the population (7,327 inhabitants registered).

In the parliamentary question, Angelo Bonelli speaks of “dozens of authorizations requested from the Municipality, the Superintendency and the Park Authority”. This also happens in zone two, the area “with naturalistic, landscape, agricultural and/or historical-cultural value and limited degree of anthropization”. The requests, following the same indications of the holders of the requests, are made to create “properties functional to the agricultural management of the funds”, but “there is a reasonable probability that these are new buildings for tourist purposes”, writes the deputy. The square footage for which authorization is requested would not, in fact, be useful for an agricultural company.

Speculators from Luxembourg

Some investigations carried out by citizens sponsored by the lawyer Lazinger would have revealed the creation in these seasons of consortia of building technicians (engineers, architects, surveyors), trained specifically to develop buildings on land of very high value. The price of the plots, moreover, increased with the establishment of the national park. Some companies that are investing in Pantelleria, the documents say, are based in Luxembourg. “It is not wealth produced by the island and it does not return to the island”, say the environmentalists.

In response to the request for intervention, the Minister of the Environment Gilberto Pichetto Fratin relied on the response prepared by the Park Authority, reproducing it last March 13th to the Chamber’s Environment Commission. The minister confirmed that in two out of three types of areas new buildings are possible only “if functional to the management of an agricultural fund” and made it known that the forestry police have been sent to the reported construction sites. Therefore, he asked Commissioner Cucci for “careful supervision around the implementation of the interventions”.

The municipality of Pantelleria has denied having given concessions for the destruction of existing dammusi, the island’s traditional stone houses.