La Rondine chiama — Rural Resistance Day

A festival between Fenoglio's pages and the Alta Langa hills

San Benedetto Belbo is a tiny municipality in the Province of Cuneo, nestled in the Piedmontese Alta Langa, made famous by the pages of Beppe Fenoglio: it is here that the Alba-born writer set many of his works, from La Malora to his hill-country tales. Born from this deep bond between literature and territory, La Rondine chiama — Literature and Territories in Dialogue is a widespread festival that unfolds over several days and traverses various Alta Langa villages between spring and early summer.

Rural Resistance Day

Within the festival, Rural Resistance Day is the most defining event: a single, dense, and rich day that places peasant culture, agroecology, and the relationship between man and landscape at its core. Co-organized with the Bôgiôn Cìt farm, the day alternates literary moments, meetings with witnesses of the rural world, a producers' market, and film screenings, in a continuous dialogue between the written word and the practice of the land.

Literature, market, and cinema of the earth

The morning opens with a literary meeting where various authors present their books dedicated to landscape, nature, and society, in dialogue with expert speakers. Simultaneously, in Piazza Emilio Canonica, an organic farmers' market comes to life with vegetables, bread, cereals, fruit, herbs, wine, beer, and honey sourced from the local rural network. At noon, there is space for tastings and lunch, while the afternoon is dedicated to rural and agroecological testimonies from organizations like Slow Food, the Italian Rural Association, and the Movement for Happy Degrowth. The day concludes with the screening of a documentary dedicated to sustainable agriculture, as part of the Cine per la Terra series.

A free event in the heart of the Langa

Rural Resistance Day is free to enter and is aimed at those who love literature, good food, and rural landscapes. It is an opportunity to discover San Benedetto Belbo, its connection to Beppe Fenoglio, and the Alta Langa—a land of hazelnut groves, woods, and ancient crafts, now also a testing ground for more environmentally friendly agriculture.