Is the government ready to give up some of its most beautiful territory in order to make some money?
Italy, like Greece, started to sell its islands to private citizens to reduce its public debt. The most obvious case regards the Sardinian island of Budelli, a natural paradise where the famous “Spiaggia Rosa” – pink beach is. The island, originally left by the national property office to be managed by a Milan company – now out of business – has now been sold to Michael Harte, a New Zealand banker for almost three million Euros. But Budelli’s is a lucky situation, since the buyer, a determined environmentalist, intends to promote environmental projects on the territory, which is already inaccessible to the general public due to the tight controls of the Maddalena Archipelago’s landscape. The island could reopen to the public and become an environmental museum with organized visits to the Spiagga Rosa, while respecting the rules of the park’s authority.
However, many oppose these type of operations (also because many of the potential buyers are not like Mr. Harte). In Sardinia many would like the State to exercise its first-option right within 90 days which would by law enable it to reclaim the island, while Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, a former minister, launched an online petition on Change.org to urgently invoke this option. The problem is obviously not the sale of a single island, but whether it is right or not in principle that the state can sell pieces of its territory to private investors for cash. And if so, for what reason in many cases – but not in the case of Budelli – all other citizens would not have the right to freely visit these territories anymore.
Sustainers of these kinds of sales say that a private but attentive owner is better than careless state management of landscape wealth. And maybe they are not all wrong. Opponents sustain that the entire territory of the country ought to remain property of the state and accessible to the public – with just as many good reasons. But the Budelli case is not the only one of an Italian island sold to foreigners. In the Lazio region the state property office is giving away the island of Santo Stefano in the Pontine archipelago. The island has its own network of roads, a solar panel based electric network and a Roman villa which in its time hosted Emperor Octavian’s daughter, Giulia. It has two ports, one called the Marinella stop and the other Porticciolo (little port) and it contains the jail where Sandro Pertini, a former President of the Italian Republic, was jailed during the 20’s.
Then there is the island of Sirenes in Sicily, in the Taormina province, where its sales ad can be found on casastyle.it website. It has a particular egg shape with a small port inside the bay, while the side facing the open sea displays an amazing drop from its rock wall and a breath-taking panorama. The island is made up of two rural buildings for a total of 100 covered squared meters, “with the ability to realize a fantastic villa on the roof of the island and a small utility house,” as the ad recites.
Finally (for now) in Grado in the Venice lagoon two islands can be purchased, Poveglia and San Giacomo in Paludo for decades in state of abandonment “with the objective of salvaging to promote the tourist and hotel industries. Poveglia, which in the 1700’s was also used as a leper hospital and then in the 1900’s a sea station for the quarantine of crews and passengers, was then transformed into a hospital and later converted into a retirement home and finally abandoned. San Giacomo in Paludo in the northern lagoon, half way between Murano and Mazzorbo, is smaller. In the 1500’s it too was a leper colony and then a military fortress under Austrian domination and then under the Kingdom of Italy but the military abandoned it in the beginning of the 60’s.
These two islands are case in point of State negligence which left them in a complete decadence and now delegates the goal of re-developing them to private citizens. Let’s hope that all of these sales will always provide, as in the case of Budelli, the possibility for everyday people to visit these places, which are our jewels. The risk is that these cases will cause a chain reaction, since Italy has many of the most beautiful islands in the Mediterranean.
Furthermore, the excessively broad sale of portions of sea to private citizens is not just about the islands. Not recently but little known, is the case of Argentario, where around the cape it is practically impossible for anybody to access the sea, as hotels, resorts and villas have closed all available access. Between the sale of our islands and the closure of ample pieces of coastline isn’t there a risk that Italian citizens will no longer be able to go to the beach anywhere they want? And instead of selling Italian islands, wouldn’t it be better to safeguard them from an environmental point of view and let them be managed by their old caretaker, who personally took care of them, a bit like it used to be some time ago?
