Casgliadau Arlein
Amgueddfa Cymru
Chwilio Uwch
Recordiad sain / Audio recording: Adriano Fantini
Oral history recording with Adriano Fantini. Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
00:00:01 There was more money to be found in soya produce. People have also started replacing the grapevines with kiwi fruit, even though the grapevines have existed for years and have a rich history in the area. Friuli is renowned for sweet white wine. The merlot grape is used for red wine. Verduzzo and Picolit grapes for white wines, the latter is very rare and can only be found in the Friuli region. He jokingly says he was treated as a slave when he went to Italy, as he was young he was given a lot of the hard manual work. One year he went over in the winter for a month and chopped wood seven days a week for four weeks. The work was essential for cooking, heating in the home. He recalls walking through sweet corn fields having to wear a thick jacket in the heat so as not to be scratched by the plants.
00:03:30 Adriano has been in Italy for the potato harvest and the wine harvest which is a more relaxed affair. People gather together and help each other for the grape harvest. He still has a lot of extended family there. The village is very small so everybody knows each other. People know his background and he is always invited into people’s houses. He recalls festivals in the area. They would have the borgo festival where there would be a cuccanga, a greasy pole which people would climb up in teams to win prizes at the top. They would play bingo- he recalls his mother winning bingo three times in one day. She once called house on the wrong number as she couldn’t speak Italian fluently. They still have those traditions in the village.
00:06:52 He wasn’t seen as a foreigner when he went over, he still has a lot of friends. If people didn’t know Adriano would know his father. He knows many of the Italians who emigrated with his father having met them in Wales. Language wise, when Adriano went over to Italy he could understand what people were saying, they would speak in Friulian, which his grandmother would speak to him. His father would speak Italian to him when he was a baby yet when he started school he would understand English but respond in Italian. After that his father stopped speaking Italian to him. He picked Italian up again when he would go over at sixteen years old and regrets that his father didn’t continue to speak in Italian. He gives some examples of Friulian; it is a mixture of French and Slovakian and is a language not a dialect, there is a Friulian newspaper and dictionary and a lot of youngsters are now learning the dialect. Similar to the Welsh language they have started translating road signs in both languages.
00:12:10 Torreano is an hour from the beach and an hour from the mountains. The food is lot different, though every part of Italy has its own specialities. They now have started to celebrate the medieval battles. The wine making tradition goes back for years. In some parts wine barrels were used to make bridges. Friulians are proud of their regional identity and the language is becoming more popular and is being taught in schools. He describes the house his grandparents lived in. The largest part was dedicated to the stables where they would keep the cows. In 1972 there was an earthquake in Friuli- they stayed in their house which only suffered one crack. They had such a large house because it had been extended to accommodate the whole family. The house got bigger as the family got bigger, but as that happened they got poorer as there were more mouths to feed so they moved away. For this reason his father moved to Wales.
00:18:00 Family life has always been an important part of life in Italy and also in Wales. When asked about the main differences between Welsh and Italian life he talks of the heat, he was also a lot younger when he spent a long time there. There was a lot more freedom over there for him as a youngster. His father Nicesio was born in 1928 in Torreano di Cividale. His mother Maureen was born in Wales in 1938. His father moved as the family needed money. Wales’ industry was prosperous at the time, he knew some people who had gone to Wales to work in the mines. They needed an extra workforce and so he joined them. He then sent money back to the family to pay for farm equipment, materials to repair the house etc. A lot of people moved away from Friuli at the time, to Belgium, America and Wales where they needed extra labour. Emigration from Friuli made the area wealthier as money was sent back. He says the largest benefit was when people started to move back, bringing money and the skills that they had learnt in Wales or other countries. They set up businesses or passed on those skills and the region got richer.
00:23:55 His father emigrated with a large group of workers. The mines needed workers so they sent recruitment drives to Italy. They returned a second time to Friuli to recruit workers. His father didn’t have experience in the work, he carried out manual labour which he had done on the farm. He moved to lodgings with an Italian family in Llanharan primarily. Italians would go out together, he met Adriano’s mother at a dance. The Italians and Welsh mixed well, he sees them as similar in that both cultures are very welcoming. There were already Italians who had cafes and restaurants in the area so the Welsh understood that part of the culture already. They were Roman Catholics whereas in Wales there was mainly the church of Wales.
00:28:27 Church was very important in Italy- he says his father would go to church every day. They would go for Sunday mass, Saints days, the church was the core of the village. He returns to his vivid memory of Italy and talks of the church bells which he would hear every morning. The church of Wales was also very important in the Welsh community.
00:31:10 He would see a lot of the Italian community in Wales. His father would take him round to various Italians houses as he went haircutting. His father learnt this skill in Italy and when he moved to Wales he would earn extra cash that way, for Italian or Welsh workers in the mine. His father belongs to the ACLI, Christian Association for Italian Workers. People would meet at christenings, funerals, weddings and also at dances. The Amici Val Ceno organised dances and Briscola (card game) competitions. The ACLI started to organise dances as well. They would also organise trips, with three or four coaches of Italians. He recalls a time when they all watched the final of the world cup on a portable TV. He met his wife on one of these trips.
00:34:31 His wife’s family are from Grottaminarda, about two hours from Naples. She was born in Hertfordshire. Her parents moved to London, Hertfordshire to work in greenhouses. The holidays were a big plus point of growing up in an Italian family. Whereas other people would go to local seaside towns, he would go to Italy every two years at a time when holidays abroad weren’t common. They would pass through other European countries in the car on the way. As a result he was quite cosmopolitan compared to other youngsters of his age.
00:37:11 Much of his holiday was spent working however or visiting family. They may have one day out in a week when he was there. In Wales people always considered him as Italian simply because of his name- both his surname and Christian names are Italian. He appreciates that now as people remember him for it. He has learnt the work ethic from his father. His father has worked to survive since he was a child. Adriano respects that once decided on something he would never give up on it. As a result he moved to Wales, learnt the language and succeeded here. Britain perhaps didn’t have such a work to live situation as post war Italy.
00:41:48 Adriano never had great problems at school because of his background. He would move to Italy if it was possible and still feels more Italian. However he couldn’t deal with the bureaucracy there. He feels more Italian than Friulian, he can’t speak the Friulian language fluently and they visit his wife’s family in the South often as well. His son supports Juventus and the family go to Italy almost every year and the children learn Italian in school. They always try to eat together as a family and get together for birthdays and parties which he considers very traditionally Italian.