Insight Guides Switzerland by Insight Guides

Author:Insight Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Switzerland
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2017-11-24T05:00:00+00:00

A land of emigrants

Northerners may envy Ticino’s copious sunshine, nonchalant ways and earthy cuisine, but the lifestyle long idealised by Swiss-Germans is characteristic not only of a people predisposed to a certain Italian-like godersi la vita (enjoyment of life), but of those who have endured long periods of poverty and hardship, with dignity and grace. For centuries this turned the regions south of the Alps into a land of emigration.

Industrialisation from the mid-19th century onwards made German and French-speaking Switzerland relatively prosperous but bypassed the remote rural valleys of Ticino, and when a comparatively modest tobacco and silk industry was established in the late 1800s it was mainly due to the area’s large pool of cheap labour. Even the opening of the first Gotthard railway tunnel in 1882 did little to change things in the short term, though it did gradually help turn Lugano and Locarno into tourist resorts.

For most of the population, nothing really changed for the better. Between 1881 and 1930 alone, a total of 25,300 inhabitants emigrated abroad. Right up until the 1950s, a trip to Ticino was still considered to be a trip back into a different era.

Now all that has radically changed. The villages in the valleys are still there, romantic and sleepy, but many of their inhabitants have resettled in crowded industrial areas around Lugano, Locarno, Bellinzona and Mendrisio-Chiasso. About 80 percent of the Ticino’s 350,000 residents and 90 percent of jobs are concentrated into less than a fifth of the canton, close to the main traffic axes heading all over Europe.

Meanwhile, German-speaking Swiss, as well as Germans and other foreigners, have progressively ventured into the mountain villages and valleys, and have converted deserted houses and stables – the so-called rustici – into smart holiday homes, used for only a few weeks of the year. In fact, second homes account for over 30 percent of Ticino residences. As a result, a Swiss law introduced in 2012 limits the construction of second homes, which must not count for more than a fifth of any municipality’s housing. The aim is to relieve the fallout on locals, who find it increasingly hard to secure inexpensive homes because of the inflated property demand and massive rise in the cost of land.

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