Page 260 - KATE_JOHNSTON_2017

Fig. 6.4 Renato rubbing salt onto bottarga. Image by author.

Sitting in the back of Tammaro’s gourmet tuna shop in Favignana, Clemente, an ex

tonnarotto in his sixties tells me his story from when he first began at the tonnara. Clemente

is a well-known character in Favignana and ambassador for Tammaro’s shop. An image of

Clemente gesturing that the products taste good appears in the shop’s brochure (see fig. 6.5).

Like Luigi, Clemente started working in the cannery when he was young at the age of 14.

This meant that he was put to work with the women at first. But then:

…they saw that I was keen to work and immediately they put me to work with the
men. So from that time they gave me a knife that I still have here, iron that
weighed 3-4 kilos and so when they were doing the mattanza I was underneath to
cut the tuna, to cut the heads of the tuna, because we would take them off, we
would bleed them, because the blood of the tuna is not good. So I would cut the
heads because the following days we would bleed them, and then afterwards they
would put them in the containers with water. So after doing it for around ten years
I was still there inside the warehouse, they saw that I always performed well, they
put me to work in the tonnara. When they would put out the nets, I would put out
the nets but when they would do the mattanza I would always go in the factory to
cut the tuna. (2013 pers. comm. 18 June)

248