« Sorry, the beach of Cala Cipolla is closed for explosion danger ». You look at their faces and immediately understand that they don't believe it. They can't, and don't want to, believe it. The face is contracted, as if the dream of entering paradise had blown up when the goal was already reached. The sign is bilingual, but whoever welcomes these poor tourists who have arrived from the United States on the threshold of the Cala Cipolla oasis, the heavenly coast of Chia, in the Domus de Maria area, explains it to them in monosyllables: beach closed due to risk of explosion.

Useless vocabulary

For the rest, even if they had a multilingual vocabulary at their disposal, it would not be easy for anyone to explain, much less understand, that with thirty degrees, blazing sun, flat sea and a breathtaking landscape, the beach is prohibited due to a bomb close to the float towards land. Barred with barriers and civil protection tape, as if all hell had broken out in that untouched piece of Sardinia. In this heart-pounding land of exclusive and enchanted beauty, everything, however, is possible, even finding a weapon of war, a potential bomb, close to the most prized shoreline of this natural diamond chiseled by the turquoise sea and a mastic breeze that touches since dawn. Whoever manages the car park has his face on the ground. Go and explain to them that after having traveled fifty kilometers and crossed the beaches of Su Giudeu and Su Cordolinu they won't even be able to set a foot in the white dust of Cala Cipolla, close to Capo Spartivento.

Summer reverse

Desert, exclusive cove without a soul: no approach. The dusty cars cannot go beyond those barriers that have been on display on the road to paradise since the past weekend. Reverse gear for most of them, who have come this far to fill their eyes and photograph the skyline of the enchanted proscenium in their memory. A film set, surrounded by a hypothetical red and white "barbed wire" that prohibits anyone from going beyond that explosive limit established by the Port Authority with a war ordinance. It is the inspection officer Mario Cespa who writes the State provision: "ban for the discovery of a presumed war device". The formula "presumed" is consolidated practice, like the one recently "found" at the entrance to the port of Teulada. Hooked in "suspension" by Navy bomb disposal divers and dragged offshore to blow up fish and bomb at the same time. The umpteenth and final discovery of a bomb outside the area of the island's military ranges opens up a disturbing scenario with a thousand questions about what is really happening on the Sardinian coasts. Ordnance, bombs and missiles appear like mushrooms everywhere, always or almost all in areas outside military ranges.

Boundless bombings

As if all of a sudden the State and NATO bombings had begun to encroach beyond the military ranges. The case of Cala Cipolla is the latest in a long series that in recent weeks has been spreading the island with ordinances and bans, from the Cagliari coast to the Ogliastra coast, up to the totally new one of Punta S'Arena, on the Iglesiente coast. It was late evening when last Thursday, September 21st, the Port Authority of Cagliari ordered the eviction of the last bathers from the exclusive beach of Cala Cipolla. Forced out of the blue to load umbrellas and beach bags, to escape without too many pleasantries from the anguish of having stayed for a whole day on an explosive shoreline.

Explosions calmly

What is most surprising, not to say disarming, is the fact that for the past six days that Caribbean beach and that stretch of sea have been permanently prohibited without anyone having intervened to eliminate the doubt of the "alleged" bomb, defuse it or make it explode wide. The provisions of the Harbor Office are peremptory: «It was deemed necessary to close off the affected body of water in order to protect the safety of navigation and human life at sea pending any blasting and reclamation operations on the site».

Orders & prohibitions

The orders of the Coast Guard are without subterfuge: «With immediate effect and until the reclamation intervention by specialized bomb disposal personnel, in the body of water and in the coastal area within a radius of fifty meters from the identified point, it is forbidden to: anchor and stop with any vessel, whether for pleasure or professional use; practice bathing and access it in any case; carry out scuba diving activities; carry out fishing activities; any activity connected to the use of the sea not expressly authorised". In other words: stay away.

Damage to image

For the rest we will have to wait until tomorrow, eight days after the discovery, to see the Navy bomb squad at work. Biblical times, considering that every day hundreds of unaware tourists arrive on the Chia coast and are forced to turn around. Backed against the wall, the Municipality of Domus de Maria was forced against its will to ban the area and shoulder the burden of very serious damage to its image. «The Harbor Office - writes the Mayor Maria Concetta Spada - informed the Municipality by telephone that the reclamation of the affected area will presumably be carried out on 09/26/2023 by specialized bomb squad personnel».

Be patient

In other words: be patient. The outcome is written: ordinance of the mayor for «the ban on the transit of all categories of vehicles, as well as prohibiting pedestrian access to the municipal road called “Baccu Mannu Semaforo” which from Viale Spartivento leads to the lighthouse of Capo Spartivento and access to the coast overlooking the body of water in front of the beach called "Cala Cipolla". State of war, in the land of tourism par excellence. It could be said, professional warmongers would say it, that it can "happen" to find a "bomb", a real one, on the beaches frequented by thousands of people, but in Sardinia for some time it has "happened" more and more often. We are publishing just some of the latest ordinances of recent days to understand that all this is no longer a coincidence.

Explosive escalation

On the eve of August 15th, the Port Authority of Arbatax put the precious cove of Cala Moresca, in the municipality of Tortolì, under lock and key. Even in that case everyone out. Absolute ban on approaching within a radius of 150 meters from the bomb identified on the rocks. Ten days ago, a new ordinance was issued by the Ogliastra Coast Guard, this time to prohibit, for a radius of 400 metres, the stretch of state-owned maritime property and body of water in front of Capo San Lorenzo. What "appears" this time is a device measuring sixty centimeters and ten centimeters in diameter. Not even the bomb found in Punta S'Arena on the coast between Gonnesa and Iglesias escaped the notice of the ordinances. It "appeared" on that stretch of sea on August 19th and they blew it up on the 27th. Asking what a bomb was doing on that coast, according to the military leaders, would be disrespectful. The question, however, in a regime where freedom of information has not yet been eliminated, is not only legitimate, but necessary.

Bomb Island

The same goes for the "blasting" operations of "alleged" war remnants, bombs and missiles, scheduled for Thursday morning, September 28, in the Gulf of Cagliari. Even in that case, an order has already been issued: stay away for a radius of one thousand meters from the pre-established point. On the island of tourism, sun and sea, in everyone's silence, the news from the Capitanerie tells of an unprecedented and "explosive" Sardinia. With an unanswered question: how did those bombs end up on the paradise beaches?

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