In Corralejo, Fuerteventura, @Story Hunters Tv met two Italian couples from the north of Italy who decided to move to the island from the magnificent beaches of the Canary archipelago. The surprise is that the daughter and boyfriend of one of the couples decided to follow their parents' example and dropped everything and moved to the island.
The Canaries are borderlands, the southernmost islands of the Union, facing Morocco. Fuerteventura is often affected by the 'calima', a wind laden with Saharan sand, which is responsible for its magnificent white beaches and the stunning Corralejo Dunes. The name Fuerte-ventura may suggest the strong wind that blows there on certain days. In reality, it was coined by its conquerors to designate a 'lucky land', Grande Fortunata being the original meaning of its name. Our friends are in complete agreement with this appellation and are keen to point out that the 'great lucky ones' are those who can spend every day of the year on this island. Franco is a pensioner, his wife Alida is not yet. Neither are Carmela and Andrea. Andrea worked in the goldsmith industry in Valenza, Carmela was a domestic helper. Alida and Franco's daughter Silvia is bursting with joy from every hole and with her boyfriend Riccardo they are determined to start all over again. Everyone is enthusiastic about the island, its people, its beaches and the sun. Andrea and Carmela say: it's a pity we didn't think about it before. They have been there for 4 years, before that they lived 9 months in Gran Canaria, but their heart beat for Fuerte.
Both couples, and the young couple, have rented accommodation in a resort on the outskirts of the town of Corralejo. In recent years the resort, known as Oasis Papagayo Resort, has been left to decline due to the financial misadventures of the ownership group. Today, a committee of owners has taken over and is gradually restoring the resort's village-like beauty. Avenues lined with palm trees, huge swimming pools, bars and restaurants that are still closed for the time being. Many of the flats are now privately owned and, as is the custom in tourist resorts, are rented out to holidaymakers when the owners are not occupying them. In the case of our friends their rents are annual and include water and electricity. Gas is not available, the kitchens are induction cookers, and heating is not needed. Carmela tells us that they sleep with the windows open all year round. Alida, too, seems to really appreciate the lack of fog that plagued her in autumn and winter in Mantua. Silvia, for her part, is delighted to be able to spend Christmas on the beach with a temperature of 26 degrees.
Carmela and Andrea, then, are not pensioners, but have moved in driven by the perennial crisis in the goldsmiths' industry. They now live by the same standards as they did in Italy, spending half as much. Among the reasons for their good living here in the Canaries, they say, are the friendliness of the locals and the tranquillity with which they go about their daily lives.
The search for tranquillity and a less frenetic pace is a refrain that is always repeated by expatriates. It is as if Italy, including the provinces, had reached unsustainable stress levels. In this regard, Barbara and I remember that, after spending nine months in the Cyclades Islands in Greece, we arrived in Terontola, a small village at the foot of Cortona, in Tuscany - so we are not talking about a metropolis -, sitting at the bar for a coffee, and we noticed, even aesthetically, a certain 'aggressiveness' in the flow of life. Cars were whizzing past, one pressing the other, people were walking in a hurry, a tense, unfriendly and, all in all, unhappy atmosphere. Faced with a fleet of mostly brand new cars, many driven by young people in their twenties, we wondered what the purchase of those cars entailed, probably debts, monthly instalments to be paid for years and years, while parents pay instalments for the latest model of television set. Cars, televisions, like mobile phones, PCs, clothes and everything else become obsolete and "old" in a couple of years, and, therefore, the desire to renew them becomes imperative. This is the great deception of so-called "well-being", the unbridled and unconscious race to possess what communication imposes on us. It is difficult to explain, but the feeling we had on that day back from Paros was of a country exasperated by well-being that increasingly reveals, but does not realise, that its well-being is actually a malaise, because it leads to an increasingly unsustainable alienation, especially of time.
Our Canarian friends seem to be quite emancipated from this situation.
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