Countryside around Codevilla, 1956

Between 1951 and 1971 around 9 million Italians left the countryside for industrial cities: internal migration redrew the country in a single generation.

In 1956 the strikes by farm labourers in the Oltrepò and Lomellina demanded the application of the labour quota law and respect for the provincial contract, in one of the last great seasons of Po Valley day-labour struggles.

You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means not being alone, knowing that in the people, the plants, the soil there is something of you.

They say we are peasants of the South, but we are peasants of the whole world: the land is not ours, and our blood pays for it.

The Oltrepò Pavese is a wine-growing area documented since Roman times and the 11th century; in 1956 viticulture still employed tens of thousands of seasonal labourers, largely women and young people.