The history of Italy is also a history of wars, hunger and survival. Along these paths, many people from Tirano, over the centuries, have been smugglers of goods useful for subsistence. This clandestine activity with neighbouring Switzerland remained active until well past the mid-twentieth century, allowing the local population to integrate the meager peasant resources.

But every respectable story has two sides, in this case perfectly interpreted by the cops and the robbers. A plaque in the locality of Cancelletti reads: “The intensification of smuggling in the 1960s brought financiers from every corner of the peninsula to these places (…) Often, the support of the loved ones was the driving force behind these mountain journeys, even though on opposite sides, both financiers and smugglers, in a historical period that will remain in the memory of these places forever.” Even amid the drama of the events, we can read the happy ending in the friendships, in the love stories and in the new families born from the meeting of young people destined to fight each other.