A nocturnal blitz, as befits the Sardinian story of the "six-legged dog" . The dominus of oil and gas in Italy, that state body born and raised under the aegis of Enrico Mattei , has not been denied even this time. To sell, or rather to give, in the “Sardinia portfolio” there was an expanse of sun and salt, sea water and flamingos. A naturalistic oasis "invented" at the beginning of the last century by a Tuscan technician with a penchant for nature and a passion for business. He, the engineer Luigi Contivecchi, farsighted entrepreneur of the environment, in 1921, invented a system of communicating vessels close to the beach of Giorgino, with the aim of defeating malaria and producing white gold, that salt of Santa Gilla capable of regenerating itself with the same frequency of winter and summer.
Longa manus
Eni's longa manus , in the second year of the pandemic, one hundred years later, succeeded in its plans: to wrest even that good of God from the island. In the silence of the Eur ice palace in Rome, far from prying eyes and curious ears, in the last few hours he has put pen to paper an operation destined to permanently cancel Eni's presence in southern Sardinia. All managed with a timing worthy of a state flight strategist: piece by piece, promises upon promises, all announced with great fanfare and drowned in regional oblivion. Eni is a pneumatic hammer , relentless in the demolition of all hope, first declined with glossy and four-color brochures and, then, ripped up with the impact force of a mine sprint. On the history of Sardinian salt, that of Contivecchi SpA, is as punctual as the deadline of the New Year. Just 365 days after the advent of the knight of the Holy Sepulcher, a certain Antonio Donato Todisco, in the chlor-soda plants of Macchiareddu, Eni scores the final blow : sale of the shares of the company that managed that immense expanse of rises on the outskirts of Cagliari. The operation takes place in absolute silence, with the aim of putting everyone in front of the fait accompli, the Region first. After all, we know that Eni is used to commanding, imposing, doing what it wants, especially in the Sardinian home. To do so, it deploys the full weight of a state-owned company, with the intrusiveness of those who have done and undone, without ever paying a pledge, from the lack of environmental remediation in mining land to those of chemistry. , that lagoon of Santa Gilla, a solar reflection for the capital of the island. Share shares sold. He sells Contivecchi SpA, in the name and on behalf of Eni, he buys Italkali, the Palermo ruler of rock salt, not salt from salt, but from mines. From the legacy of Enrico Mattei to that of the lawyer Francesco Morgante, the king of salt. A real Sicilian oligarch of white gold capable of losing 51% of Italkali in 2015 with a single move to none other than the Region of Sicily, which had "forgotten" to secure the public ownership of those mines . Now the heirs of the patriarch of that all-Sicilian operation, despite never having managed a salt pan, get their hands on the most important economic and environmental compendium of Sardinia: the salt flats of Santa Gilla. . It is certainly known that the preliminary sale, transfer of shares of Contivecchi to Italkali, was signed in the middle of last Wednesday night. As usual, no press release, no announcement with great fanfare, but very strict silence, so as not to disturb the "escape from the salt". The communication to the RSU, the unitary trade union representatives of Macchiareddu, arrives with the effectiveness of a telegram, concise and without details. Just a bureaucratic step. Ditto for the Region, which, instead of a telegram, receives an epitaph on the operation. On 31 May next, Eni, trade unions and the lords of Palermo will make official presentations in the offices of the Regional Department of Industry. . On that occasion it will be understood whether chronic subjection to Eni will prevail, or whether the Region will put a serious and concrete barrier to what appears to be the "sale" of a "regional mining concession" in defiance of written rules and commitments made. .
