Nobody's land. As if those slopes close to the Cervo Oasis, dominated by Mount Arcosu, had suddenly become a free zone, where everything is allowed, where the laws of the State and the Region have become waste paper in an instant. This time the Palaces of Rome were as diligent as ever, ready to close their eyes and ignore constraints and prohibitions. A blitz, you might say. This story, however, made up of annihilated plums and looming tax havens, is much more. It is the latest test of strength of a "master" State that does not look at anyone, that ignores history, tramples on the rules, cancels without a blow the most elementary rules of "loyal" collaboration between the Region and the Municipalities, if does not care about nature, environmental heritage and landscape.

Caravan of bulldozers

More than a coup, a caravan of bulldozers ready to uproot plants and pastures, raze every naturalistic value to the ground, regardless of contrary opinions and looming dangers. Leafing through the papers of the ministerial proceedings of this umpteenth cyclopean assault on the gates of Cagliari is like handling a trial file, complete with "bold" statements put in black and white by the new serial "pannellators" of Sardinia, all denied by "sentences" detailed, harsh and unappealable, of the regional and municipal offices. The project of silicon panels to be placed on more than 200 football fields, one next to the other, has unprecedented dimensions, making it the largest photovoltaic field ever "imposed" on national soil. Almost 200 hectares of agricultural land to be transformed into an expanse of mirrors, positioned in areas prohibited and forbidden by regional and state regulations, in defiance of the naturalistic oases imposed by European provisions.

The end of agricultural lands

When the project landed in Sardinia it was August 31, 2021. At that time the company that presented it in the offices in Viale Trento had an unknown name: «Leta srl», a limited liability company, located no less than in the hamlet of Sambuceto, in the municipality of San Giovanni Teatino, province of Chieti in Abruzzo. What Sardinia, Macchiareddu, the Cervo Oasis, has to do with San Giovanni Teatino is an absolute mystery. The fact is, however, that the administrative offices of the Region are not there. The rosary of prohibitions that they submit to the Regional Council to send back to the sender that wild occupation of an infinite expanse of agricultural land is an encyclopedia of violations. The sequence is a crossfire: the plant determines a significant occupation of agricultural land (approximately 179 ha), already infrastructured also for irrigation purposes, the site affects, according to the Uta PUC, almost exclusively, areas intended for agricultural use “E”, characterized by typical and specialized agricultural production. In the documents, the Region notes "unfounded information" when in the agronomic report attached to the project it is stated that the intervention "has the objective of redeveloping a former marginal agricultural area, located adjacent to the industrial center of Macchiareddu and in an area heavily polluted." All statements devoid of any foundation. The proponents, in fact, writes the Region, do not provide "any feedback regarding the extent and nature of the pollution". There is more to the far-fetched statement on the degradation of the area: «The area, in fact, historically - it is written in the Region's verdict - has always been affected by agricultural activities, and has not been degraded by previous or in place, therefore it cannot be traced back to the category of "areas to be favored for the installation of renewable energy plants". This observation would have been enough to send all the documents to offices other than the administrative ones, just to point out that in the planning documents, signed by technicians who were actually public officials, a totally different reality was represented from that which could actually be found, without too many frills, with an inspection on that area close to the slopes of Monte Arcosu. Even a novice in environmental planning could understand that that project was a punch in the face of landscape and nature. The Region writes: «The construction of the plant in question in the planned area would, in fact, determine an extension of the same industrial area, significantly altering the agricultural landscape that still characterizes the vast area». It would have been enough to arrive close to that area to come across the majestic entrance of what was the "Agricola Mediterranea", an agricultural enterprise that had attempted to compete, without success, with the large Californian "plum orchards". An intensive cultivation of plums on an industrial scale ended badly certainly not due to the quality of the land, but due to the cultural-commercial risk.