I’ll tell you about the largest former penal colony in Europe
In Castiadas, in southern Sardinia, there is the largest former penal colony in Europe. Guiglia's notebook
Once upon a time, grandparents told their naughty grandchildren that they wanted to put them on "bread and water" as punishment for the pranks they had committed. It was a way of evoking with fake severity what actually happened to prison inmates in the early nineteenth century, forced to make do with the little food available and to suffer a further sanction within the sanction: feeding themselves with the essentials without weighing on their public coffers.
In the digital age which has long welcomed the re-educational and not just deterrent meaning of punishment, it is still possible to experience how entire generations of inmates lived in much harsher times. And to experience it not with the virtual, but with the real: two hours on bread and water in "meditative cell number 1", as the place has been renamed, narrow and without windows, once reserved for the most dangerous or rebellious convicts, and therefore even chained, in the largest former penal colony in Europe.
It is well preserved in the south of Sardinia in Castiadas, not far from the famous and magnificent location "Costa Rei" for the beauty of the sea and beaches, and for the discreet and dignified way of doing things of the Sardinians.
That "rei", be careful, is not an Italianism of the Spanish "rey", i.e. king, but rather it is a dutiful homage to the rei, that is to say the guilty, who in their thousands (more than 36 thousand) populated this large agricultural prison and they reclaimed the territory from 1875, the year of its birth, to 1956, the year of its closure.
So, to go back to breathing that prison air at least for a couple of hours (don't worry: without a ball and chain, the only reminiscence now banned), just book on 348/5182463 or by writing to the director's address [email protected] . Even now after the Christmas holidays, when the desire to reflect on the important things in life such as freedom, for many is combined with questions about the Christian faith, which is nourished precisely by bread, water and wine.
Many have resorted to "experiential tourism", as it is defined, starting with an important magistrate of whom Anna Palita, the aforementioned director of the former colony restored and open to visitors like a museum to which she has dedicated herself, does not report the name, but rather the few words he uttered with a troubled soul after his voluntary detention in cell number 1: "Now I will think much more about making a sentence".
He did not think, however, that the first group of 18 "convicts", 5 guards and 2 employees who on 11 August 1875 landed at Cala Sinzias, another now renowned beach, from a war boat in a depopulated and uncultivated, and for a long time also prey to malaria and plague epidemics. It was the vanguard of those convicted especially for minor crimes, to which "La petite Cayenne", the little Cayenne, as it was nicknamed by the French, was destined. Preferably those guilty who were skilled carpenters and good bricklayers.
From landing to landing, dormitories for 600 inmates and accommodation for 130 prison officers were built in an area covering almost 13,200 hectares within which the inmates themselves built the mighty structure that would house them.
But in the open-air Cayenne there was little to guard or escape from. As one of the many directors of the colony wrote, “this way of life rebuilds a new spiritual structure, brings goodness back, the desire to forget the crime. Someone fled, but returned spontaneously." Prefects and authorities also returned to observe the colony at work. Mussolini several times (with Claretta Petacci).
In the furthest place in Italy, where even the worst criminals around could end up, as long as they had already served two thirds of their sentence and had acquired a prison certificate of "absolute good conduct", a philosophy of rehabilitation took shape: even those sentenced to thirty For years, working for themselves and for the community they had a second chance to atone for their wrong life. So much so, that when the word about Cayenne in the Sun and the Wind began to spread behind bars, those convicted of heinous crimes with no tomorrow asked to be transferred right there, to the colony of Castiadas. Where the illiterate inmates, very many of them, were taught to read and write and all of them had a trade.
Anyone who wants to relive in two hours many "end of sentence" sentences – i.e. with the prospect of re-education for reintegration – decreed in the 81 years in which the colony has functioned, will be able to discover stories of murderers, rapists, perpetrators of "honour killings". ”. But also of opponents in the fascist era locked up in punitive cells to weaken their body and spirit.
Alessandro Serenelli spent some time here, and in 1902, at the age of nineteen, he attempted to rape and ended up killing the eleven-year-old Maria Goretti with an awl. Then becoming, after having served 27 years in prison and asking the victim's mother for forgiveness, he became a devout religious man and she, since 1950, a saint and martyr of the Catholic Church.
But the visitor will also be able to learn about the insurrections made or attempted, because not everything was rosy between prisoners and agents. He will be able to grasp the not always easy relationship between the local population and the condemned prisoners who are often foreigners, that is, coming from the "continent", as the Sardinians refer to the rest of Italy. Finally, you will be able to see that the former colony was a center in the center of the town with a hospital, pharmacy, post office and the church of San Basilide close to the director's villa.
Eighty-one years of history and stories brought well to defuse evil, according to the judgments and prejudices reigning in the various eras. But times change and in two hours you can now relive the time that no longer exists.
Published in the Alto Adige newspaper
www.federicoguiglia.com
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/castiadas-ex-colonia-penale/ on Sat, 13 Jan 2024 06:52:03 +0000.