Marmilla, the ghost chairlift: stopped for 14 years, "it's too expensive"

Fourteen years have passed since the last ups and downs of the first chairlift in Sardinia, perched in the Spinarba area.

We are in Marmilla: the plant that worked for ten years is now a melancholy monument to uselessness and its death was sanctioned by maintenance costs. Costing 1.7 billion old lire from community funds, it was supposed to launch tourism in the area.

The work was strongly supported by the former mayor of Villanovaforru Giovanni Pusceddu, founder of the tourist consortium which includes 18 municipalities between upper and lower Marmilla. The aerial section is just over a kilometre: departure a few tens of meters from the "Sa Corona Arrubia" local museum, between Lunamatrona and Collinas, at 230 metres, and terminus on the Giara di Siddi, at 400 meters above sea level, near the tomb of the giants Sa Domu and S'orcu. The unsustainable costs concerned the periodic replacement of cables and routine checks, over 300 thousand euros each time.

«We have asked the Region to come to our aid, the chairlift is a tourist attraction, but we need their help», asks the mayor of Lunamatrona and member of the Consortium's board of directors, Italo Carruciu. In 2010, when the audit contract expired, the magic vanished.

The complete article by Giovanni G. Scanu on L'Unione Sarda on newsstands, on the app and in the digital edition