Beppe Grillo's Blog

One-dimensional world

I hate mass tourism,
the locusts that arrive with the charter flights
in places never seen before and that they will never see again.
I hate mass tourism that transforms agricultural workers into waiters,
shepherds into cleaners and the territory into a playground for children and adults.
I hate mass tourism that steals water from the wheat fields
for the swimming pools and the loos of the grand hotels and that, however,
leave instructions in every bedroom saying how not to destroy the planet.
I hate mass tourism that has no awareness of culture,
of the food, of the history of the places where they are visiting
frenetic and blind with in one hand an improbable guide book.
I hate mass tourism that transforms ancient marvellous places into a photocopy of the urban suburbs in which
they spend their miserable lives.
I hate the ecological eyesores, the villas at the seaside, harbours
transformed into an unending sequence of restaurants, pizzerias and bars.
I hate the cigarette ends that have taken the place of the shells on the beaches.
I hate the plastic bottles and the straws for the drinks that stick out of the sand,
instead of the chelae of the crabs and “ossi di seppia”.
I hate this fat, sweaty, ignorant tourism with little shows in the evenings and the buffet that is always available with food imported from who knows where.
I hate mass tourism, the supermarket in the summer with the shopping trolley full
of useless things to show off in the living room when you get back home.
I hate mass tourism that destroys villages, languages,
the ancient faces of the people, the politeness of those who have not yet been subject to globalisation.
I hate mass tourism that standardizes everything.

Soldi rubati - by Nunzia Penelope
I cittadini sono poveri perché i delinquenti sono ricchi {The citizens are poor because the delinquents are rich}
Buy your copy today.

Comments

And i hate Italian oil prices..

The oil tank is nearly empty and one liter of heating oil is going to cost me € 1.339 as per http://www.energy.eu/#LPG

This is of course Libyan oil, after the recent 20% price decrease, where the cost of one barrel can be as low as $1. Which means that 159 liters of oil are costing less than €0.88.
Then it gets traded some 250 times by large hedge funds, like Bank of America, JP Morgan and all those other leeches which polute the world's news with the prospect we're running out of oil, in 2060.
Then, after the price has increased from about half a cent to half a euro, we add 100% tax, and then we apply 20% luxury tax.

And i hate mass tourism as well... "for we are many"..

Posted by: Paul | August 29, 2011 03:46 PM

I've seen worse poems. I have empathy for much of what signore grillo complains of. For me, the enemy isn't any particular tourist or tourism, per se, but the fact that it's become an industry -- the commercialism of the world, as it were. It's what results whenever anything is normativized, that is to say, produced on the assembly line: the more that's produced, the less quality control is imposed. It's the result of the bottom line thinking that dominates every aspect of life: social, political, and economic. And of course, given the moment, it's not going to go away anytime soon -- every country seeks to increase its tourism, to get the tourist buck. But for an unthinkable change of values, there's no going back -- the way of life signore grillo longs for is gone forever.

All of the major decisions that affect every person on the planet are made in the boardrooms of the wealthy. Of course there are ways to keep a certain class or nationality from your shores, but to say how would in itself probably be a crime.

Posted by: peppino vallesi | August 28, 2011 09:44 PM

I hear you, Beppe, and I think I undertand what you say and mean. Is it OK if I continue to study Spanish in an effort to better understand the people of Spain and most of the rest of the Americas?

Posted by: Charlie Willey | August 28, 2011 09:17 PM