Portraits capresi is a series of interviews with protagonists of the island entrepreneurship. The life paths, projects, dreams and secrets of many makers of the Myth of Capri in the world.
Between Nello D’Esposito and his son Gianmaria we sail in forty years of sunsets, westerly storms and dancing parties in the light of the lighthouse of Punta Carena, symbol of life and hope.
“It was my father Ercole – recalls Nello – the pioneer of this enterprise. He was a successful building contractor. The mayor of then pushed him to create at the Lighthouse, where years before there had existed only a small inn, an innovative bathing establishment, symbol of an Anacapri that looked to the future”.
It was the strength of the D’Esposito family, of Ercole and his children, that made the Lido del Faro, exposed to the seas and western winds, become in a few years one of the most glamorous beach resorts on the island.
“When you arrive at the Lighthouse – suggests Gianmaria – you cross an ideal border. You are estranged from your anxiety and your problems. The beauty of nature gives you a vital energy, synonymous with happiness. At the Lighthouse every sunset is a small caprese masterpiece, like the paintings of the famous English painter Turner who painted for a lifetime always the same sunset, in appearance equal but always different. So often we stop to watch the changing colors of the sunset and it seems that all our fatigue vanishes. My mother, Renata takes pictures of them all”
It is the sea, with its imponderable force to be the dominant thought in Nello’s unconscious.
“At night, in winter, when the wind blows impetuously, I wake up and would run to the lighthouse to defend my Lido that in the last forty years the storms of libeccio and west have destroyed several times”.
Gianmaria, like all young people, looks to the future and technology.
“We have digitized the booking system. Anyone with their mobile phone can book and choose their favorite pitch in the sun”.
But Gianmaria also thinks about the future of his Nume Tutelary: “I hope that the premises below the Lighthouse, may one day become a “Museum of the sea” and a center for observation and defense of cetaceans that swim in our seas, a place, connected perhaps with the Dohrn Center of Naples, Open to all, tourists and islanders”
For a moment the sunny look of Nello, turned with confidence to his son, for a few seconds becomes gloomy ” Il Faro has become, together with Gradola, the only outlet to the sea of Anacapri. We risk that in 2024 many of our island beaches will be privatized and acquired at auction by large foreign investment funds. But we prefer to be optimistic”.
Greeting me, he says smiling “Maybe it will be the light of the lighthouse to illuminate our ideas and our future”.
by Renato Esposito.
