When the presidential custom-built car, complete with tricolor and flag-shaped banner on the sides of the bonnet, leaves the Granarolo factory – towards Lamezia – it is as if suddenly someone had turned off the lights of the festival. Because when the Head of State passes somewhere he leaves his intense “scent” of credibility. This is why it is a day of celebration with a capital F. Sergio Mattarella dispenses serenity, even in a cursed land far beyond the usual rhetoric which, at certain latitudes, becomes the only possible truth. But there's more. To see, to appreciate, to export. Like the experiences of Gias of Mongrassano and Granarolo of Castrovillari which have made (respectively) frozen foods and dairy products a must in the South (but not only). Ideas and qualities that challenge economic constraints and prejudice, imposing themselves precisely where it is thought that the ground is not fertile at all. And instead there is hope far beyond the other rhetoric – this time the institutional one – that hovers on the day of Mattarella's arrival. Everyone clings hand and foot to the two best practices, because the other realities float, they make do. Some sink. Small and medium-sized businesses strangled by the crisis of the times, forced to close at a rate of 32 per day. Yet, the President with a capital P is present in Calabria. He shakes hands, receives smiles and reassurances. He visits the facilities and stops to talk to the employees.
And here is the first photo (moment captured by photographer Franco Arena) which we will cherish forever as a future memory of the morning in which the Head of State gave Calabria a caress: Mattarella among the Granarolo workers; each with their own uniform. And for a moment the presidential suit, sort of Level modern, it mixes with work overalls: there doesn't seem to be any disproportion, everything is harmonious. Yes, as harmonious as the Mameli Hymn sung by the choir of students of the Istituto Comprensivo di Lauropoli, a hamlet of Cassano, who one day will say that they actually saw the President. Of having sung for him. Of being intoxicated by the scent of credibility released into the air on a festive day.
