Via dei Missaglia. From Ferrari Red to Marrakech

Spoons

I enter an area that is still almost unknown, for an exploration, ultimately, more like a curious tourist than an idle flâneur. So I am in via dei Missaglia, beyond piazza Abbiategrasso. I have an appointment with a teacher and poet, Barbara Rabita, who has lived here all her life, and whom I often meet at the Casa della poesia. She immediately illustrates some essential characteristics of the area: "It is a neighborhood with a strong migratory process. The cultural nerve center is the Puecher, the first comprehensive school structure in Italy, a sort of Campus. Founded in 1973, it is dedicated to the partisan Giancarlo Puecher Passavalli." I imagine that Barbara moves around these parts more or less daily, as I would do, if I lived here: "I often wander around - she tells me in fact - between Via Baroni and Via Feraboli and unfortunately a couple of times I have also witnessed scenes of bullying by kids towards weaker and more fragile classmates." But it is right to remember that these areas in the past hosted many factories, now closed, abandoned. "Gratosoglio was born - he explains to me - to welcome workers from the south. Today the children of those workers are no longer here. Many Africans, Middle Easterners, Asians live here. Since the 1980s their coexistence, not always easy, with Italian workers began." But let's observe, then, how these places appear to the eyes of the simple passerby, and on this too I ask Barbara for a comment, who says: "I am struck by the tall, square buildings on Via Baroni, from straw yellow to egg yellow, slightly blackened, with a pink stripe decorating them vertically. Families of various origins gather in front of the Spesa Sì minimarket, which is on the opposite side of another shop, the Marrakech, a men's hairdresser. And then the poverty and smallness of these shops clashes with the presence of a Rossocorsa dealership that, on Via dei Missaglia, sells Ferraris." And at this point I thank her and set off on my long journey home.

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