For 125 years, the Pian di Spagna plain has been transformed into a bustling town, with the Casa Madonna del Lavoro at its center. Among Guanella's "dreams," this was the more unlikely
by Riccardo Bernabei
On November 4, 1900, "with hardship and sweat, but with joy and universal applause" the "new agricultural colony of Olonio San Salvatore in Pian di Spagna" was inaugurated (L. Guanella, Per the emigrants, «La Divina Provvidenza», November 1900), one of Don Guanella's most iconic works, in which pastoral care and charitable mission were inextricably linked to the rebirth of a territory.
The one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary is an appropriate occasion to retrace the origins of the Casa Madonna del Lavoro, the parish of Santissimo Salvatore, and the town of Nuova Olonio, as historian Don Saverio Xeres did last October 17, in a conference as part of the celebrations, which culminated on Sunday, October 24, 2025, with the Mass of Cardinal Oscar Cantoni, Bishop of Como.
Until the advent of modern transportation, the Pian di Spagna (the name of the broad plain where the Valtellina ends) was reached by water, disembarking at Colico, on the northern tip of Lake Como. Continuing on foot, at the entrance to the Valchiavenna (from which one could then reach the Val San Giacomo, Don Guanella's homeland), one came across this land, where Olonio had been founded in the 1st century AD.
The village had enjoyed a certain prosperity in the Middle Ages, but the constant flooding of the Adda had forced the population to abandon it. Many centuries later, during the
In the nineteenth century the Austrians managed to channel the river, preventing further flooding, but by then the Pian di Spagna had become a swamp, which had even swallowed up the ruins of ancient Olonio.
The young Luigi Guanella, coming down from his mountains to reach the seminary in Como, when «he was crossing the moors and steppes of Pian di Spagna, could not understand how such a vast land was left uncultivated, while in his mountains even a span of land on a rock is cultivated to obtain a small pile of hay» (L. Guanella, Notes on the history of the House of Providence. Sketches). An almost agronomist's observation, in which however we also read a dramatic personal memory, that of his brother Gaudenzio, who died tragically in 1871, falling from a rocky spur.
Don Guanella was also concerned about the phenomenon of mass emigration "which breaks the bonds of nationality and family without removing people from poverty". But "is it enough to cry out against the horrors of emigration? No, we must provide farmers with the means to earn their bread honestly in their own country" (L. Guanella, Catholic agricultural colony in Pian di Spagna above Colico, «Divine Providence», April 1900).
Don Guanella meditated for a long time and then started the Work, driven by these considerations, but also by an interior inspiration recounted in his autobiography and dating back to the period in which he was with Don Bosco: «Presentation or not, [...] he had in his mind the Pian di Spagna fixed, and very clearly how one day a foundation would be made there, and the poor initiators who would use the dry corn straws to light a little fire in their poverty» (L. Guanella, The ways of Providence).
In 1899, Don Guanella formed a committee to promote the construction of a church, the reclamation of the land, and the establishment of a farming colony. In July 1900, the deed of purchase for a large plot of land was signed, and work began. As the land was gradually reclaimed from the marshes and made arable, farming families settled there: thus, Olonio San Salvatore was born, or reborn, for which Don Guanella also opened an elementary school.
The construction of a temporary wooden chapel dedicated to the Divine Savior was immediately arranged, and it was ready by the end of September 1900. The colony had "Our Lady of Work as its special patroness." Such a Marian invocation had spread in France at the end of the nineteenth century, in accordance with the teaching of Leo XIII, the Pope who, with the encyclical rerum novarum (1891) had for the first time placed the Church in front of the workers' question. A simulacrum of the Virgin, with two workers kneeling next to her in traditional Valtellina clothes, was welcomed into the temporary church on 5 May 1901: the «peasants of Pian di Spagna [...] see in the Virgin who welcomes the homage of the farmer and the worker their own image and are moved by it» (L. Guanella, The month of Our Lady of Providence and Work, «La Divina Provvidenza», May 1903). In May 1904, the current brick church was inaugurated, which has been the parish seat since 1936 and the sanctuary of the Madonna del Lavoro since 1942.
The reclamation had been entrusted to expert Venetian workers, but the disabled people from the Casa Divina Provvidenza in Como were there to help them. In fact, on September 29, 1900, Don Guanella had arrived by boat, "with a dozen patients whom he called good sons and helped them onto a prepared cart, and off they went amidst the laughter of the people of Colico who were amazed" (The ways of Providence). It was this particular company that would accomplish the feat that not even the efficient Habsburg government had managed to accomplish.
Part of the land remained in the care of the "good sons", who carried out a real therapy through agricultural work. A satisfied Guanella noted that "seeing themselves used in the most physical field work [...] they feel almost rehabilitated; they love to show others with great satisfaction that they are worth something and earn their living" (Luigi Guanella, For our psychiatric idiots?, «Divine Providence», July 1903).
Don Guanella's initiative had revived a dead territory and given birth to a new community, which today has become larger than the Dubino nucleus, to which it belongs civilly. And after 125 years that Work continues in the vast and functional Casa Madonna del Lavoro, which welcomes over two hundred guests, including the elderly and disabled, and which is a sign of how human work is truly "participation not only in the work of creation, but also in redemption" (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, n. 263).