GALLARATE – “Wherever we go, it will be better than here.” These were the emblematic words of the fifty migrants as they boarded the bus and left the Extraordinary Reception Center set up in the former textile factory on Via Ranchet in Gallarate forever. It was March 2018 and one of the worst management of asylum seekers in the province of Varese was about to close. Now the images of that industrial complex in Madonna in Campagna are back online. The warehouse will in fact be auctioned on May 8th in a single lot for a base amount set by the court of Busto Arsizio at 615,000 euros.
The refugees’ nightmare
The property is currently occupied by a company with a regular lease contract expiring next year, signed in 2019 before the seizure or bankruptcy judgment. Five years ago, it also underwent a partial renovation, as the conditions in which the refugees were forced to live were well below the decency threshold. While waiting to complete the transfer procedures, it was they who showed journalists the conditions of the dilapidated barracks and the piles of food thrown in the trash. “There were four bathrooms for over a hundred people,” they said to show how the 35 euros per person that the prefecture guaranteed every day to the Kb cooperative were invested, which, overwhelmed by the controversies, decided to withdraw from the management of migrants.
Revolts in the province
Like in other cities in the province of Varese, for two years the former Madonna in Campagna textile factory was turned into a profitable business by the cooperative. Social powder kegs: they can’t be defined otherwise than the Extraordinary Reception Centers that Kb opened in those years also in Busto Arsizio, Somma Lombardo, and Samarate. In Gallarate, the situation was on the verge of explosiveness every day when the Cas was opened in Via Beccaria, in front of the train station, adding insecurity and degradation to a neighborhood in the city that had always been difficult. The transfer of asylum seekers to Via Ranchet – which took place in 2016 – did not calm down the guests, who forced law enforcement to intervene on at least two occasions. The guests stood out for episodes of violence, revolts against the managers, and internal feuds between different ethnic groups. The atmosphere heated up beyond the breaking point several times, such as when clashes broke out between asylum seekers from The Gambia and Niger. A month later, more disorder, caused by the removal of five foreigners who did not appreciate the decision made by the prefecture. Not even in Samarate was their stay always peaceful, often requiring the intervention of the carabinieri. However, it is a peaceful oasis compared to the Cas created by Kb in 2014 in Via Briante in Somma Lombardo. Here, the most disturbing episode dates back seven years ago when a 32-year-old from Burkina Faso – nicknamed the “Kabobo sommese” – did not respect the curfew and, armed with a pickaxe, caused havoc. He destroyed the urban furniture of Somma Bassa but above all smashed the windshield of a car that was passing by at that moment. Providentially stopped by the carabinieri, he was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital.
