Vincenzo transforms the Favignana tonnara

Vincenzo transforms the Favignana tonnara by replacing reliance on salted tuna with a more ambitious system of processing and preservation. The project joins a new product to a redesigned workplace: tuna is to be boiled and sealed in oil, while the plant is altered to accommodate production and seasonal workers. His insistence that whole families can work there turns the change into more than a technical experiment; it is a reorganization of how the catch, the site, and the community are meant to function together.

Background and the neglected tonnara

Vincenzo’s decision follows a practical comparison of the tuna fisheries already under his control. He owns Arenella, Sant’Elia, and Solanto, but argues that Favignana and Formica together yield a larger catch than those three fisheries combined. He has rented the Favignana tonnara from the Pallavicinis in Genoa, and he now asks Carlo Giachery to travel with him to the islands. Olive oil and barrels have already been ordered and are on their way, so the visit is not merely exploratory: the supplies for a new operation are moving before the plan has been fully explained to those working there.

The condition of the site sharpens the contrast between its potential and its present management. The tonnara stands in the bay’s most sheltered part, but its reed roofs and cracked walls, with heaps of rope left in the sun, suggest neglect. Vincenzo compares this state with the more than three thousand oncie charged in rent for a fishery he regards as one of Sicily’s richest. The existing operation has a resource of considerable value, yet the buildings and methods do not appear to realize it. For Vincenzo, the gap between the catch and the condition of the plant is an opening for investment and control.

From catch to a new product

At the plant, Vincenzo examines the accounts with Saro Ernandez. Three thousand tuna have already been caught in the current mattanza, though it is only May and the nets have just been lowered; more catches are expected. The scale and timing of the season make the question of what happens after the fish are landed especially pressing. A plentiful catch is not enough if the product cannot be sold or carried reliably.

Vincenzo’s proposed answer is to stop producing only salted tuna. He notes that sailors and shipping companies distrust salted fish because they believe it causes scurvy, leaving much of it unsold. In place of that vulnerable market, he proposes cutting and boiling the tuna, then preserving it in oil in airtight barrels. The oil and barrels already dispatched to the Aegadian Islands make the proposal concrete: transport, processing, and storage are being coordinated around a product intended to travel beyond the island.

Ernandez objects that oil-preserved tuna will rot or have to be eaten quickly. Vincenzo counters that he has tested the method for more than three years, using tuna from Arenella and San Nicolò l’Arena with Giachery’s help, and says that it works. The new plan therefore rests on trials conducted elsewhere in the family’s fisheries, not solely on confidence in an untested idea. Favignana is to become the setting where that experience is expanded into a larger production system.

Reorganizing work and the fishery

Vincenzo’s proposal requires structural changes to the marfaraggio. He plans to establish an area with boilers for cooking the fish and accommodation for seasonal workers. Instead of limiting employment to fishermen, he says the operation will employ families. When Ernandez dismisses the island’s people as incapable of the work he imagines, Vincenzo replies that the company will begin by itself and the families will learn together. The exchange makes labor organization part of the innovation: the process is not simply a new way to preserve fish, but a scheme for bringing more local workers into production.

The plan also gives use to materials beyond the main catch. Vincenzo proposes using tuna fat to make lamp oil and drying the bones for the soil, reviving practices he associates with earlier methods. His account of change is thus not a claim that every part of the old operation must be discarded. New machinery and oil preservation are set alongside by-products put to use, so that the fishery’s output extends beyond salted or preserved meat.

The response at the scene marks a shift in the discussion. Ernandez has protested that the plan is unprecedented and that the people there cannot carry it out; the rais, Master Cordova, responds with interest when Vincenzo emphasizes that families can work. Vincenzo’s answer does not promise that the transition will be effortless. It sets out a sequence instead: the operation begins with the company, workers learn the process, and the work is shared across families.

Commercial and social significance

The project belongs to a wider commercial world in which control over processing and transport shapes the value of commodities. Spices, for example, pass through many hands and long routes before reaching European ports, with costs rising at every stage; British and French colonial suppliers send not only medicinal herbs but also sugar, tea, coffee, and chocolate into increasingly open markets. The Florios likewise use the flow of goods through Palermo: their warehouses at Palazzo Steri hold spices in transit, and customs duties are paid when goods enter the city rather than before. Against this background, the Favignana project concentrates on changing the product at its source, using oil, barrels, and processing facilities to make the tuna more marketable.

The contrast with Sicily’s sulfur industry is stark. In the sulfur mines, children and men emerge from underground corridors carrying baskets of yellow stone that deform their backs, while the ore is weighed and sent to markets in France, Britain, and elsewhere. At Favignana, Vincenzo also draws value from a natural resource, but his stated plan includes changing the workplace, providing accommodation, and employing families rather than fishermen alone. That does not erase the project’s commercial purpose: the preserved tuna is meant to create a viable product and a larger enterprise. It does, however, give the transformation a social dimension alongside the search for profit.

The result is a plan that connects the catch, preservation, labor, and the use of by-products. Favignana’s substantial seasonal yield is the starting point; the neglected tonnara is to be rebuilt for a different process; experience from Arenella and San Nicolò l’Arena supports the method; and families are invited into the work. Vincenzo’s transformation of the fishery is decisive because it treats the sea’s bounty not as a finished commodity but as the beginning of a chain he intends to reorganize.