On Christmas’ night in 1996, in the stretch of sea between Malta and Sicily, a storm caused the shipwreck of a boat loaded with immigrants from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. 283 of them layed on the sea floor. The first to reconstruct the event was the newspaper il manifesto, that interviewed the survivors and published a list of the victims. Meanwhile, some fishermen from Portopalo di Capo Passero, southern point of Sicily, found human remains entangled in their nets, but didn’t reported the fact fearing that any investigations would impede their work. They belonged to an exiguous minority, but media focused attention on it, and Portopalo came to be connected with Christmas’ tragedy. There are still many doubts about how shipwreck occurred, where it exactly happened, why victims’ corpses were never retrieved. What is certain is that Portopalo’s community stands out in every day reception and voluntary work towards immigrants. Indeed, is through this strip of Sicilian earth that the stories of thousands of them pass every year.