• Migration. "For immigrants from the Open Arms, Lampedusa is what New York was for the Italians"
  • Italy.The Open Arms disembarks on the island of Lampedusa after the Italian Prosecutor's Office ends the immigration crisis

The Mediterranean has no tides, but the calm of the Lampedusa Sea, these days, is unusual. "The normal thing is that the sea is moved!" Admits Nino, who has been sailing for more than 50 years. "It is really very good day, a sea so calm today, honestly, I did not expect it," he says when his ship, in a southwest direction, is already a nautical mile away from the old port. He, who sails the seas since childhood, knows very well that his island "is always ventilated".

Antonino Mannino (Lampedusa, 1956) is not only a lifelong fisherman. It is the living example of the commitment of his companions on the island when it comes to helping migrants in danger at sea. This Sicilian place is not only the farthest land from the rest of Italy, but the "lifeguard island" halfway between Libya and Italy , in the middle of the Central Mediterranean. It is very common, for Nino, to have contact with migrants and their ships when sailing through the Lampedusan Sea. "On many occasions I have found myself in need of helping them , approaching with my boat," he explains. "In that direction," he points with the index finger pointing west, "there are small boats of migrants, stranded and abandoned."

There was a year that was very difficult for him: "When we had to intervene because there were many migrants in danger on the Island of Rabbits." It refers to October 3, 2013, when an old ship with 537 migrants on board sailed from Libya and reached the coast of Lampedusa Island at dawn. "They were in difficulty and we had to go rescue them," recalls Nino.

After a fire on the deck, the migrants aboard, frightened, began to move from side to side until the boat completely overturned , causing the death of 367 people. There were survivors because some swam to the coast and many others, who could not swim, were saved by fishermen on the island. The event went around the world because, a few months after the visit of Pope Francis - his first trip as Pontiff; Europe saw, with its own eyes, the cruelest shipwreck ever recorded then . "It's very hard to assume, it's not easy," admits Nino: "But that day the fishermen of Lampedusa rescued many lives." He is clear: "Saving a person in danger at sea, for a fisherman, is an obligation."

Nino, whose 87-year-old mother continues to work the mackerel in oil as she has done all her life, admits that the immigration issue "was much more difficult" in the past and "much more was said about it." "At first, migrants created a bit of discomfort because it was a new phenomenon for such a small town, with 5,000 inhabitants." And Nino adds: "Today, by comparison, we are much calmer."

Italy is in the middle of the old Mare Nostrum, a closed sea. That is why in Italian there is no expression "against wind and tide" , as in Spanish. Fishermen like Nino, however, believing that "we are all equally human in the sea" puts the anti-immigrant Italy of League leader Matteo Salvini among them. This Lampedusan, in his humility, from the most remote island, is part of that Italy ready to defend the fishermen's code. That is why Nino, although his language does not contemplate it, knows perfectly what it is to go against all odds.

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