Time.news – As everywhere in Europe, Swiss households are called upon to save energy.
A sobriety that comes naturally to inhabitants of Val Bavona, one of the most remote places in the Alpine country never connected to the mains.
Located in Canton Ticino, the Italian-speaking region of the country, this very wild valley of glacial origin is one of the steepest and most rocky in the Alps.
But there are twelve villages with stone dwellings and stables that they still host a few dozen inhabitants for several months a yearexcept in winter when fewer than a dozen live there.
The uniqueness of the valley is due to the fact that eleven of these locations are not connected to the network while the region produces a lot of electricity thanks to the dams placed on the hills.
They were built after the Second World War to bring electricity to German-speaking Switzerland, Romano Dado, former municipal councilor of Cevio, on which the hamlets depend, told AFP. To bring energy to Val Bavona, transformers would have had to be built, but “the people here didn’t have the money for that,” he says.
Only the last village could afford this luxury. With the passing of the decades, the resident population in the valley has shrunk from about 500 less than 50 inhabitants, and those who live there have learned to do without the electricity grid, installing solar panels on roofs as early as the 1980s and using fireplaces, kerosene lamps and candles.
Per wash clothes, “let’s go to the river as always”, explains Tiziano Dado, bricklayer and brother of Romano. This narrow valley of about ten kilometers flanked by vertiginous rocky slopes of over 2,500 m of altitude has been affected by avalanches, floods and landslides for centuries, sometimes causing deaths.
“It was a hard but simple life,” recalls Bice Tonini, 88, who warms up in front of the fireplace in her home. Despite her age, she continues to live there from spring to October thanks to the sun.