Arbatax, a concert to honor the hero of Ulassai who died saving children

It happened in 1933 in Val di Susa: a young Sardinian from Ulassai , Cesare Lai, 27 years old, airman, lieutenant pilot, sacrificed his life by choosing to crash into the mountain rather than endanger the children who were playing in the only place where he could have attempted an emergency landing.

To commemorate that extraordinary event, a twinning concert was held in the Church of San Giorgio in Arbatax between the Arbatax Choir and the Policromae Choir of Giaglione, in the Susa Valley . The event was held under the patronage of the Municipality of Tortolì. In 2023, the Arbatax Choir performed in the Susa Valley. A twinning, a moment of sharing and encounter, to honor the memory of the hero of Ulassai, awarded the silver medal for valor.

The village of Giaglione, population 600 in the province of Turin, has adopted this beautiful page of history: that tragedy and that heroism are also remembered with a memorial stone discovered by chance by two hikers and restored thanks to the National Alpine Association . It was an event that seemed destined to be forgotten. In Giaglione, it was talked about, but everything was hazy, until hikers taking photographs in the area discovered the memorial stone, which had lain hidden, forgotten, for almost 90 years. Now it is a story almost from another era, an extraordinary act of love that Giaglione, Ulassai, and the entire Ogliastra region have made their own, together with the Lai family.

The memorial stone was discovered—as Paolo Carta recalls in a 2021 article in L'Unione Sarda—by Gilberto Forneris (full professor of Aquaculture and Freshwater Ecology at the Department of Veterinary Sciences of the University of Turin, an expert ornithologist and wildlife photographer) and PierCarlo Porporato (an official at the Department of Veterinary Sciences of the University of Turin, a historian, photographer, and documentary filmmaker), two friends with a shared passion: walking in the countryside with cameras. With their lenses, they capture images of wildlife, especially birds. Their favorite "hunting" area: Pra Plan, in the Giaglione district, near the Santa Chiara fort. "It was here," Porporato recounted, "that, walking along the path to the left of the Pra Plan meadow, we discovered a small abandoned monument among the bushes."

The Municipality of Giaglione did the rest with a ceremony held right at the restored memorial stone, attended by the then mayor of Ulassai, Serra. Since then, the twinning has been strengthened with a concert in Arbatax.