The historic “guardian’s house” on the island of Budelli, the small building a few steps from the famous Pink beach in the La Maddalena Archipelago national park, will be demolished. The Park Authority, which became its owner, abandoned the idea of transforming it into an info point – a hypothesis which had not passed the environmental impact assessment – and now aims to remove the structure and reclaim the area, returning that space to nature.
The building, of military origin, is linked to a particular history: from 1989 to 2021 it was the home of Mauro Morandi, a former physical education teacher from Emilia who had settled there voluntarily, becoming over time a sort of solitary guardian of the island. Morandi left Budelli in 2021, at the age of 85, for health reasons.
The area is subject to a maximum protection restriction which prevents the realization of any work with significant environmental impact, and this has effectively made any recovery or conversion of the structure impossible.
The Pink beach – so called because of the color of the sand, rich in fragments of corals and marine organisms – owes its international fame to the film “Red Desert” by Michelangelo Antonioni (1964). Over the years the island has been at the center of complex events: a purchase by a New Zealand entrepreneur, an appeal to the Council of State and finally the acquisition by the State, which entrusted it to the Park Authority.
The protection of the area is rigorous today, last September, thanks to the report of a tourist operator, the Park staff and the Guardia di Finanza intervened to sanction a serious environmental violation that occurred right on the beach, confirming how high the attention is around one of the most delicate and protected natural places in Italy.
