Our friends in Italy: Loredana and Paolo, founders of Cranberries Italia

Paolo Catena & Loredana Cramarossa of CranberriesItalia

Loredana Cramarossa and Paolo Catena live in Rimini, Northern Italy and have been in lockdown for weeks as the country struggles with a rising death toll from Covid-19.

Paolo describes the situation as similar to a war. “You can’t see your enemy, but it’s a war.”
Loredana and Paolo have a strong association with Limerick and have visited here many times. The music of The Cranberries introduced them to us.

With The Cranberries in 2001

They founded the fan site Cranberriesitalia in 2001, the first Italian website officially recognised by The Cranberries and the band’s record company.
After the passing of Dolores O’Riordan, Loredana and Paolo organised a fundraising drive in Italy among fans to support music workshops at the Learning Hub here in Limerick. Through their website and social media Cranberriesitalia has embraced the city and developed strong connections to Limerick and its music community.

Limerick Post talked to our Italian friends this week, to see how they were coping and what lessons could we learn from their experience.

Limerick Post: What is the situation where you live, can you leave your apartment.
Paolo: Throughout all Italy it is forbidden to go out, except for urgent reasons such as work or the need of buying essential goods like food or medicines.
Many companies manage to let their employees work at home, like Loredana is doing at the moment. Others, on the contrary, such as the one I work in that deals with exhibition stands, have temporarily stopped their activities because all exhibitions, shows and all those events that cause people gatherings in open or closed spaces were suspended.

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LP: How do you pass the time?
Paolo: We spend our day at home, reading books, watching films and spending a lot of time on social networks too, both to read the news and to keep in touch with relatives and friends.
In this way we manage somehow to feel less the distance and the impossibility to have a direct physical contact.
On the first days we even manage to do those small house chores that are usually postponed: cleaning of the garden, small repairs at home. Music is always a valuable hobby: we listen to it both online or directly at home. But we also interact through our community “cranberriesitalia”, where we are always in touch with the many Italian fans, and also with those from all over the world.

Loredana Cramarossa and Paolo Catena of Cranberries Italia visited The Learning Hub in Limerick in 2018, Cranberries Italia raised funds for the facility to honour the memory of Dolores O’Riordan.
LP: We have seen people play music from balconies in Italy, can you still enjoy live music?
Paolo: The so-called “musical flashmobs” (live shows from the house balconies) were launched through Facebook. It became quite a success and the first two or three days were also very emotional. As far as I know, there isn’t a proper online channel dedicated to such initiatives, everything is spontaneous.
This initiative then spread to other European countries, and we could also see some videos in Ireland.
On St. Patrick’s Day some Cranberries cover bands, for example, pre-recorded some live performances (each one in his or her own house) and then they made some live broadcasts on Facebook.
It was a nice way to continue to be virtually united, and partly also a way of distracting from the sad news that, in these days, are unfortunately very frequent.

LP: What message do you have for your Limerick friends at this time.
Paolo: I know that this is a very difficult moment for everyone and we saw that also in Ireland the situation is slowly getting worse. It is very important to manage to keep calm anyway and not to panic or be afraid.
Here in Italy we are living in a more and more dramatic situation.
All of us are very aware that we must do the first actions as single people: stay at home, avoid direct contacts with people and everything that is useful to avoid more and more infections.
To our friends in Limerick City which we visited more and more during these years, we send a big hug and warm encouragement to stay united. It may seem a contradiction, as it is not possible to be physically united, but it is important that the whole community realises that the situation is really serious and big sacrifices will be needed and that only by staying united we can get out of it.
We hope to be able to come back soon to meet all our friends in Limerick.
Italy coined the slogan “everything will go well”, which we want to share as our best wish from our hearts to all of you.”

Loredana and Paolo had plans to visit Limerick again in July, that visit is now put off until a later date. We send them our very best wishes at this time.

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