Nadia Maggioncalda muscle builder for love. Originally from La Spezia, Nadia does hard work: she is part of the cooperative of La Spezia mussel growers under the guidance of Paolo Varrella: "the only mussel maker in the La Spezia area". Because the mussels in Golgo dei Poeti (in Liguria) are called muscles and woe betide you if you call them anything else. Here is her story.
The story of Nadia: the only muscle builder in all of Italy
Nadia told her story to Slowfish, the event dedicated to sustainable fishing. Over 30 years ago she met Eugenio, the man who would later become her husband in '89, and almost immediately she started following him on a boat to help out in the company. “As a child I didn't see a future of this kind for me. But since I 'encountered' this profession my life has changed love of the sea”, he said. And it is true passion, because otherwise such a "heavy" and tiring life choice would not be explained. Very masculine when it comes to the physical aspect of the job. “We are constantly at sea, regardless of weather conditions. Whether it's hot or cold we're there. And then there's the manual labor. When I started, 34 years ago, ours was still a very ancient profession, in many ways stuck 100 years ago. It was a work of the arms, of the back. We pulled the muscles over the boat, and washed them by hand.” Then, some arrived modernization. “These changes have helped us a lot, even if our job still remains a very hard job, starting from the hours: there are days that we are at sea from 5 in the morning to 8 in the evening, and when I get home I am exhausted, physically very proven." A great passion that is transmitted from generation to generation. The couple's son has also chosen this path, not an easy one, but she undertakes it entirely for the love of the sea and thetechnology. In nature, mussels perform a very important function in enriching the marine and terrestrial ecosystem: they are in fact real natural purifiers, which purify the water by retaining carbon dioxide to form the shells. “Water is my element. I'm better in the water than out. I understood it immediately, and I would make this choice again now,” she concluded.
