3' min read
3' min read
Montegrosso is worth a chaining up. An internationally renowned chef, Pietro Zito, who has decided to chain himself up to defend the present and the future of this rural hamlet founded in the 1930s and now inhabited by less than 250 souls, has taken to the field to defend this inland Apulian village threatened by physical isolation. In this hamlet - located at the foot of the Bari Murge, halfway between the Adriatic and Basilicata, 15 kilometres from Andria and 8 from Canosa - there is a road, the SP 231 (Andriese-Coratina), recently modernised and completed, with four lanes, not yet tested, which has no exits at the height of the hamlet, neither direct nor on a ring road.
Once the work on the new Montegrosso road - which is also Borgo della Salute from 2021 - was completed, a recognition of which there is only a trace in a road sign placed there by the municipal Marketing Department, it remained isolated and could only be reached by narrow, winding roads. When the protests started, a temporary roundabout was built, then last April the company announced that it had to clear the 4 lanes. And the protests returned: of the residents, supported by the mayor of Andria, Giovanna Bruno, of the agricultural entrepreneurs active in that productive area, and of Pietro Zito who decided to chain himself. For this international chef it is not only the defence of his home village, of his restaurant Antichi Sapori, which for 31 years has been an international reference point for local cuisine and biodiversity, a Slow Food chiocciola since 1994, an exact clone in Tokyo for 15 years, a 50 per cent foreign clientele and a garden for seasonal vegetables and herbs for the kitchen. It is also the defence of a scarcely anthropised pole within the Alta Murgia rural park in Bari, it is its gateway from the north, it is the protection of a valuable agricultural area in Andria and Canosa, with real hidden giants of Apulian wine and olive growing.There are two solutions on the table: to make the roundabout, which is now provisional (in mid-June there was yet another accident), structured and safe; to go back to a variant of the original project with a ring road, costing 10 million euro, and land for this purpose largely already expropriated, but the region does not have the funds to proceed.
Against the closure of the roundabout Zito then threatens to chain himself. A solution is promised: 800,000 euro of provincial funds to make the roundabout structural, safe and illuminated within six months. The protest is suspended, but in October 'if they don't carry it out, I'm ready to chain myself up,' promises Zito. Because both the township and the future of thousands of farms are at risk, some of them historic, such as that, founded in the 1600s, of Count Onofrio Spagnoletti Zeuli (two estates and 400 hectares, 250 of which are olive groves, wine cellars located in old hypogea), of the De Corato family with the Rivera cellars active since the 1940s (75 hectares under vines and wines exported worldwide), of Agrolio of the Agresti group (oil, wine, catering, biomass), of the Di Pietro group with its intensive olive groves. For Count Spagnoletti Zeuli, the structural roundabout 'is a contrived solution, but it is the lesser evil. For the companies, the damage remains, it is a shortcut with a roundabout in the middle of four fast-flowing lanes and difficult movements for lorries and agricultural vehicles. Provided it is done, or else the future projects planned in the hamlet will also be at risk: the headquarters of a course at the Its agro-food industry in Locorotondo, chaired by Francesco Casillo, linking agriculture and food; an Albergo Diffuso, in agreement with Confcooperative, for authenticity tourism. And then that (very very futuristic), of the Gal Le città di Castel del Monte, to redevelop the median between Montegrosso and the Federiciano Manor by supporting the recovery of the farmhouses that overlook it.
