We are closing last boxes and we find ourselves holding an old postcard…
More than 60 years have passed and everything has remained (almost) like then: the sea sound, the sunlight, the shade of the olive trees, the cicadas; the fast rhythms and the speculative logics of a way of making management aimed only at profit have never arrived here because we have always thought that this place, its magic, its beauty, its silence, should be preserved and protected. But world changes in an inalienable way; we have tried, over the years, to find ways to reconvert ourselves towards solutions that would respect the nature of this place, giving at the same time a perspective to our work, but doing business in Italy is not easy and in some areas it’s even harder.
There comes a time when certain situations become simply unaffordable and you need to turn the page; we do it peacefully because we know we have put all the love we could in our work, despite the difficulties and the strain; we do it with a regret that we can not even explain because Maralunga was our home, our work, our effort; Maralunga is the story of our family, intertwined with hundreds of people who have made this place special.
Places can be beautiful, but what makes them magical are the people who love them, Maralunga in this sense has given and had so much and has become what it is thanks to all those people who loved it like us and with us.
Thank you for helping us make this journey wonderful and this place magical. Thank you for respecting his silence, his beauty and his rhythms. Thank you for being its (more than ours) guests and for having done it just passing by for a single night or for having stopped for an entire season and being back, sometimes, for years.
Thanks to all those people who, in this long period, have been at our side in the organization and management of work, who have supported us and often bear us; thanks to those who have worked with us for a lifetime or almost so, who never got tired and who became part of our family and thanks to those who arrived only at the end but were able to give us a bit of lightness in what we knew would be the last season.
We are sure you will take care of other special places, of which Italy and the world is plenty of; please, never stop looking for such places and loving them. We wish you a life full of beautiful things and we remind you that if you want Mr Mario’s peppers you can come and visit us in the torrid lower Po river valley, where we are pretty sure he will move his plantation!
A big hug to all of you from Mario (true and unique Maralunga pillar), Lucia, Enrica… and Francesca (who we know to be here in every breath of wind and who would hold in an embrace you all, one by one).