Che ne sarà dei fiori (What will happen to the flowers)

Che ne sarà dei fiori

(What will happen to the flowers)

By Donna Rosita Nubile by Federico García Lorca.

The time of Donna Rosita is in her body rotting in Granada, and her heart flying, hanging to a promise. And time passes and progress ages you, discolours the future. The concrete even wrinkles. What will become of the flowers? What will happen on 31 March 2013, the day designated for the definitive closure of the OPG?
On 26 January 2012, the Senate chamber approved an amendment contained in decree 3074 called “Empty prisons”, according to which the Judicial Psychiatric Hospitals (Asylum), “whose conditions offend the civil conscience of the country”, will close by 31/3/2013. It can be read in the text of the law:

By 31 March 2013, the penitentiary institutions that are already the headquarters of the Judicial Psychiatric Hospital will be definitively closed or, alternatively, converted to another type of prison.

The decree becomes law on 14 February 2012. The countdown begins. The Regions, which have the competence in health matters, have 12 months left to equip themselves with new facilities capable of receiving inmates. This was the expenditure forecast:

for 2012 120 million for facilities and 38 million for activities, for 2013 60 million for facilities and 55 million for activities.

From the forecast to the first budget, the ministerial decree is still in progress at the StateRegions Conference with a delay of 6 months, no funds have been allocated. The year 2012 is coming to an end and the evident risk is that the 158 million (120+38) will return to the public budget and be allocated for other purposes.

The date of 31 March 2013 is approaching and the closure of the OPGs is inexorably moving away. According to article 222 of the Penal Code, all inpatients are citizens who have been acquitted of a criminal offence for mental illness but who, because they are socially dangerous, must be subject to a re-examined safety measure within two, five or ten years. In concrete terms this translates into internment in an OPG for a time that can potentially be extended indefinitely.

Donna Rosita’s time mixed with the promise of the definitive closure of these horrors. But after that… what remains? Are there some alternatives ready to take care of these PEOPLE? The criminal asylums will be abandoned, but what about the inmates?

All of this is passing over their lives without them being able to intervene. The only thing they can do is cultivate hope, live in illusion, while the body continues to crouch under the weight of the future stolen by a promise.
The work was conducted so that the inmates themselves would be the authors of the scenes, the images, the contents of this study, trying to give them the freedom of expression and vision that is denied to them. From Lorca’s text they kept the illusion of a promise they still believe in.

Gesualdi / Trono