It is a long story of announcements and deceptions, an infinite succession of expedients and planned delays. When there was something to take, they took, always with both hands. Now that there is something to give back, they run away, always running. Pollution, debris and rusty chimneys remain on the ground. Workers, hopes and the future remain on foot. Deep in Sulcis, once the electric motor of Sardinia, the streets have even lost their signs. There hasn't been any production here for a long time, if anything it drags on. The prices of lead, zinc and aluminum no longer mark the time. Here even the workers, in the glorious times of primary metallurgy, followed the performance of the London Metal Exchange to make sure of the good fortune of the Portovesme factories.
The announcement calendar
Now, at the limit, they are forced to count the days in the calendar of mockery, those which for decades have marked without hesitation the modern history of the industrial center of Sulcis, born to give prestige to Italy without metals and without mines. If the copious archives of state announcements were speaking, bombastic and baseless, one could glimpse a strategy that comes from afar: let's "rob" the territory, through state and parastatal companies, take away low-cost metals, to be transformed in second and third processes in rich and "productive" Italy, then we leave the "promised land" without work and polluted, in the most total productive desert.
Desert, last chapter
The latest chapter of that cursed plan of cheap exploitation is taking hold, without praise and with much infamy. In Sulcis, in the general silence, the hour of the "desert" is taking place. The announcement by the Minister of Energy Security, Gilberto by name, Pichetto and Fratin by surname, on the end of the coal era in Italy, is one of the acknowledgments of the obvious statements: the exit from coal for Sardinia is postponed between 2026-2028. As if he had announced that tomorrow, thanks to climate change, the sun will rise. In reality, those dates between 2026 and 2028, like the previous ones, are far-fetched, without any serious planning of events, much less a clear and defined energy strategy capable of assigning the Island a short-term energy future. medium or long term.
