There has been a huge outpouring of solidarity in Switzerland for the people of Blatten. Yet debate around the cost of protecting mountain villages has also arisen – tactlessly fast. Is the divide between the Alpine regions and the lowlands growing? The debris had hardly settled in the devastated village of Blatten when voices in the heart of urban Switzerland could be heard asking: “What is life in the Alps worth to us as a society? Whatever it takes?” ‘Who will relocate?’ It was a breach of taboo: an editorial in the NZZ am Sonntag openly called into question Swiss solidarity between mountainous areas and the lowlands. From an office in downtown Zurich, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief suggested that people that should start moving away from mountain villages. “The less there is, the less that can be destroyed. Who will relocate?” he wrote. Meanwhile, in the Lötschental valley in canton Valais, the mayor promised that “we will rebuild all our homes”. That the debate arose so ...
