Kutuzov corridor, ground floor, the less noble one of the Winter Palace. The anonymous and bare entrance hall, in the presence of gold embroidery and opulent stuccoes of the great Baroque and Rococo rooms, is a marginal and hidden gut in the largest of the Imperialist Russia's Museums, that of the Hermitage, in the city of Vladimir Putin , St.Pietroburgo. Moreover, the dedication of that museum ravine is reserved to a modest general of the eighteenth century, Michail Illarionovič Kutuzov, son of the time of the Tsar of Russia . A tunnel, when compared to the magnificence of the whole and the Soviet grandeur of one of the most important museums in the world.

The kidnapping of the Giant

If he could have been able to return to Cabras without even saying goodbye. It was not possible. They loaded it on a crate and transported, without too many pleasantries, to what was until 1991 Leningrad, the most communist and cultural city in the Soviet Union. Little or nothing has been known about it in Sardinia. Only a few sober press releases, a few images. Besides, there was little to celebrate . That pandemic trip in October 2021, costing the iradiddio, had been touted for years as a major marketing operation. For a moment, however, it did not turn into the first war kidnapping of a Giant of Mont 'e Prama in the era of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Sardinian mission in St. Petersburg miraculously ended on January 22, just a month before the launch of Putin's "special" operation in a foreign land.

The hall for 16

However, it was not just the war that nullified even the less flattering effects of that collective trip to Putin's land. It is enough to look at the images of the inauguration to understand that the consequences of that very expensive mission would only have been the burdens for the public purse. In that entrance hall, the Giant, three thousand years of history, was positioned on a construction scaffolding, in front of one of the 1,786 doors of the Museum, in the never crossed threshold of one of the 1500 rooms, all forbidden to the warrior of Mont 'and Prama. Sixteen people in number to attend the inauguration. Twelve were Sardinians. Bobore, Larentu, Efis, Cabillu, Compoidori and Segundu, the six Giants left in Cabras, will therefore have nothing to envy in the presence of the unfortunate warrior sent to Putin's land. They have a home, for now, they have it. Small and narrow, but they can still see the hills of Mont 'e Prama, beyond the Pond of Cabras. For the rest, however, even the Giants, boxers, archers and warriors, who remained in the land of Sardinia have nothing to delight in . When they learn that that trip to Russia, with passage to Berlin, Thessaloniki and in a few weeks to Naples, has cost much more than what has been spent in their natural home in Mont 'e Prama in the last ten years, they will have more than one gasp.

Money & holidays

Of sums, of public money spent on these holiday-style missions, we cannot talk about it. Looking for administrative documents that declare who has spent, and how much, is a difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. All online sites responsible for administrative transparency declare themselves inaccessible or devoid of content. If you ask even the most confidential sources for news, they will tell you that those accounts are dealt with by European reporting. The only possibility is, therefore, the highly armored safe of the funds that Europe allocates to Sardinia. This is where the travel treasure map, “Giants” format, across half the world can be found . The project description has the high-sounding name: “International traveling exhibition -“ Mediterranean: the millenary and nuragic civilization of Sardinia in St. Petersburg and its surroundings ”. The acronym of the project is Heritage Tourism. Funding the operation is none other than the Fesr 2014/2020 - Action 6.8.3. To manage everything, design and construction, is a specialized company. A large part of Europe pays for the mission in Russia, the same as the sanctions against Putin. The geographical area of intervention for the promotion is limited: St. Petersburg - Berlin - Thessaloniki - Naples.

The basement of gold

The objective of this exhibition, in that sort of "basement" of the Hermitage, is the international image of Sardinia. All in antithesis to the lesson of the Sardus Pater of the Nuragic Civilization. Giovanni Lilliu, in fact, more than once had urged to "never divide" the Giants, because, he explained, they represent a unique and inseparable statuary ensemble. Carrying around, to the sound of millions of euros, a Giant conflicts both with the history and with the grandeur of the statuary ensemble of Mont 'e Prama . A Giant walking around St. Petersburg, the Museum für Vor-und Frühgeschichte in Berlin or the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki is understandably a serious "diminutio" of the grandeur of the Mont 'e Prama Hill.

4 trips from 350,000 euros

The papers in our possession, which we publish, are explicit: the budget for the Vacanze Giganti operation is 1,433,500, one and a half million euros for 4 trips, 360,000 euros for each trip. The report even reports the financing shares: anti-Putin Europe pays 50% to send the Giant to Russia, 35% pays it to the State and 15% the Sardinian Region, which ultimately disburses the funds for the operation. . The figure is a slap in the face to those paltry 43,000 euros allocated for the latest excavation touted as the great Mont 'e Prama operation . In practice, for that "targeted" excavation, 3% of what was "squandered" was spent to make Gigante and a group travel from St. Petersburg to Naples, passing through Thessaloniki and Berlin.

Alms to Cabras

Not even adding up the funds from the Arcus excavation project, in the end just over 600 thousand euros, and the other 3 micro-funding of just 45 thousand euros actually, is half of what was spent on the Giant's vacation trip. Certainly it can be said that those "missions" have promoted the heritage of Mont 'e Prama. Too bad that if any of those tourists were to arrive on those hills they would find only a desolate land, with excavations that advance at the pace of the slowest of the state pachyderms. Nor does it bode well for that construction site of the unitary Giants' Museum-residence funded for almost ten years now, confined to an eternal unfinished one. The site of the extension of the Cabras Museum, intended to house all the statues found in the Sinis hills, is a ghost . The sign of the works is eloquent: the three million much vaunted have become one million and 778 thousand euros. The announcement of the works had been published the beauty of 5 years ago: on March 24, 2017. According to the contract conditions, the completion times had been set at two hundred and six days, given that the company had committed itself, achieving a higher score in the award, to reduce execution times by 90 days.

Museum, almost a journey

The award resolution was dated November 14, 2018. With an auction reduction of 15.8%, the contract became € 1 million 472 thousand, almost as much as the trip to St. Petersburg and its surroundings. The end date of the works is engraved on the sign at the entrance to the “ghost yard” of Cabras: January 22, 2022. The skeleton of that museum is desolately empty, the surrounding area abandoned and deserted. Not even a worker works on that frame that has been standing still for some time, not even a wall, not even a roof. All desolately blocked. Certainly it had to be already good that finished . More than five years have passed since the start of the contract and everything languishes here. There will be no shortage of excuses, from Covid to war. One fact is irrefutable: the journeys of gold, millionaires and for the few, have never stopped. Here, in the only true land of the Giants, negligence and misdeeds deny the right to history, that of Mont 'e Prama.

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