The two faces of Lampedusa: tourism on paradisiacal beaches and the scene of the migratory drama

It is not yet summer, but

.

For many, this Italian island is a

, while for thousands of immigrants from Africa it means salvation on their dangerous and sometimes deadly

: they are

that come together in the same place, although almost without touching.

Lampedusa, belonging to the Pelagia archipelago, is a small Italian island

in whose urban area, with low houses scorched by the sun, its 6,000 inhabitants live off fishing and, above all, tourism.

However, a

has had a full impact on its cliffs: located in the middle of the central Mediterranean,

Rabbit Beach, famous on the Island of Lampedusa.

Photo Shutterstock

When did migrants start arriving?

Of course it was not always so.

The old people of the place remember that Lampedusa lived peacefully exporting its fish until

It was the preamble to a drama that would worsen with the chaos in Libya, after the fall in 2011 of the dictator Muammar al-Gadhafi.

Since then, the island has faced continuous waves of migration and

such as the 2013 shipwreck, in which 368 people died.

Some women in the main artery of Lampedusa, in front of the port where thousands of immigrants from Africa disembark.

Photo EFE

This week, without going any further, almost 4,000 immigrants arrived, the majority from Tunisia, overwhelming their only primary reception center, that of Contrada Imbriacola, with room for 400.

organized landings

However, everything is arranged so that this does not interfere too much with local life.

The

and are then taken to the center, sunk into a rocky valley, walled in and guarded by the army.

Life inside is

where the "rescued", including hundreds of children, spend days crowded together, on dirty mattresses or sheltered from the sun of justice under the pine trees that shade their patio.

An image from August 2022, of a migrant rescue off the island of Lampedusa.

Photo AP Photo/Francisco Seco

The authorities organize the transfer of hundreds of immigrants to Sicily in large boats to ease the chaos, but this usually also happens at nightfall, discreetly.

The streets of Lampedusa

Meanwhile, in Lampedusa people live calmly, although aware of the drama, remembered with a mural in the streets.

The emergency is evident above all in the large police presence

;

in their clinic, where they attend to some emergencies, or in the hustle and bustle of their small town hall, where the new mayor, Filippo Mannino, is looking for a place to bury the bodies of two women found this week at sea.

For the rest, Lampedusa

when many locals make August by renting houses or with restaurants that offer succulent fish.

Tourist destination

There is no sign of immigrants on the street: "You don't see them because they arrive by barge and are dumped directly into the center," admits Giuseppe, a fisherman who left his nets to sell handicrafts on the city's main artery, Via Roma.

View of the Rabbit Beach, the most famous in Lampedusa.

Photo Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP

"It does not affect tourism at all," his neighbor Antonia seconded him at the door of his business.

Lampedusa is a

to which many tourists make a pilgrimage.

In fact, already this April it is combed by a warm breeze that has encouraged some to lie on their stomachs on Playa de los Conejos despite the fact that there are still few direct flights.

There are those who saw the reef right away, like Giuseppe Palmieri, who runs the tourist agency that his father founded with the arrival of the first plane on June 12, 1968. "We were the only ones," he boasts.

Half a century later, "

" he says happily in his office.

This despite the immigration issue: "Immigrants do not wander down the street, they do not affect tourism, which continues to grow. They are different things," he ditch.

nameless cemetery

But there is a place in Lampedusa that they all share: a

with Padres Píos and lizards and whose stillness is only interrupted by the hum of a power station that, a few meters away, feeds the island.

Grave in the cemetery on the Italian island of Lampedusa of an unidentified immigrant.

Photo EFE/Gonzalo Sanchez

Some of these foreign victims of the sea were buried in this cemetery for years: the International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 17,000 have disappeared in its waters since 2014;

at least 2,836 in the first nine months of 2022.

They are nameless tombs that say

but that someone has decorated with drawings, a flower or a wooden boat.

Others, like little Youssef, born in Libya, rest in large squares with crosses and where trees grow, although it has been inevitable to place a sign that warns, almost cruelly, of the "prohibition of littering."

Very close to this place stands the "Gateway to Europe", a sculpture that points to the salvation of the mainland in front of this tragic sea.

Although every afternoon is usually taken by boys who listen to music before a languishing sun.

Because life must go on in Lampedusa, a new and uncertain

Gonzalo Sanchez / EFE

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