Barbarano olive grove goodbye

13 January 2025

‘And so the last strip of olive grove by the lake is gone forever. It had remained untouched for years, overcoming the crazy dreams of the Vate who wanted an airport there; it had emerged unscathed from the restorative frenzy of the post-war period and the suicidal cementing of the 70s and 80s.

Not even the fashion for resorts or super-luxury villas had touched him. It had remained there, half-abandoned with a crumbling wall that, from the Gardesana road, gave a glimpse of the impertinent olive trees that formed a backdrop to the lake.
Then, at the dawn of 2025, he too fell, throwing in the towel in the face of Teutonic entrepreneurs so in love with Lake Garda that they wanted to destroy it.

One could repeat the usual phrases written for years and slipped like water over the stones of the Barbarano stream. Destruction of the landscape, cementification, building speculation...

Here we are in 2025 and we still have to talk about this? About land conservation, about administrations granting building permits that bury priceless landscape values. For what? For urbanisation charges, to redo 100 m of asphalt, to change the lampposts on the cycle path? Is a lamppost worth the life of an olive tree? Is an asphalt road worth a meadow or an olive grove?

But then, placing the blame on the administrators alone (who have faults anyway) is the easy game. What is lacking is the ability to be indignant. To be indignant because all evidence of the past has been taken away from us, because our place of dreams has been turned into a caravanserai without even the charm of the exotic.

Because by now our lives are punctuated by 8 months of chaos and 4 months of solitude and bare trees that are unable to hide the misdeeds committed on the land.
Can we say that this 2025 is off to a good start for Garda?

Bookings are flowing in and a better year than 2024 is forecast, say the tourist operators'.

Luca Pelizzari


Read the article in GardaPost of 13.01: https://www.gardapost.it/2025/01/14/uliveto-di-barbarano-addio/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3URxhn1BqZfcJrIRh903fZhK6sAxHsr2DHaeXr3mvb5__OVMReiU4klzE_aem_L7WA5j9kVqEz4-knviN6HA