They went to get them from the other side of the world. From South America to Ukraine, from Romania to Spain. From no man's land to a foreign enclave on the slopes of Monte Arcosu. From the promontory of Santa Gilla it is a moment to immerse yourself in the boundless devastation of "solar" silicon "splattered" in thousands of hectares stolen from nature and agricultural lands with impunity.

Checkpoint Arcosu

Here, anything can happen to you. It certainly doesn't go unnoticed. If you cross that sort of "Checkpoint Charlie ", between the Sardinian border and the "de facto" American one, between the industrial area of Macchiareddu, mortified by the polluting failures of history, and the farms that the Yankees, those of the most powerful investment bank of America, JP Morgan, they conquered with loads of dollars, in an instant you risk finding yourself surrounded by armed security guards as if we were in the vaults of Fort Knox. Hundreds of cameras, directional and rotating, placed in every corner of this surreal landscape, overturned in a few months by thousands of photovoltaic panels impressed on the ground as if there were no tomorrow.

Wall Street observes

The drilling hammers advance as if they do not have to miss even a beat of the prices on Wall Street, the financial exchange in the heart of New York. Every day of additional sunlight, captured by that infinite expanse of mirrors, is a chain of slot machines that fills the boundless wallets of powerful high-class financiers scattered throughout the world. The Cervo Oasis, in the exclusive Monte Arcosu reserve, the largest extension of scrub-forest and Mediterranean forest in Europe, has been changed forever. Whatever the orientation of the view, there is not a single glance that is not dazzled by an unprecedented "colonial" operation, with implications that open up dramatically contemptuous scenarios for Sardinia and the Sardinians.

Squires on guard

The construction sites are numbered, gates and active garrison everywhere, with self-equipped and stationary patrols. To be protected there is that "good of God" which will end up, between the sale of high-priced energy and billion-dollar incentives, only and exclusively in the coffers of the most powerful bank in America. Entering into this gigantic work of "waterproofing" agricultural land means breathing down the necks of "squires" who with a monitor monitor hundreds of workers scattered across a chessboard that only Sonnedix, the American capital in Sardinia, could put into play. One hundred and twenty football fields, one next to the other. Mind-boggling project, with a ten thousand euro company sold to the solar arm of JP Morgan for the sum of 33 million euros. An unprecedented financial operation. A turnaround of companies which in the construction site sign is summarized as «Sandalia Solar Farm», a ten thousand euro limited company, registered in Corso Buenos Aires in Milan. The entry of "Sardinians" into the foreign compendium immediately raises the alarm. The warning goes out via radio to the workers scattered here and there: don't talk to anyone. They fear cameras, overt and hidden, as if they were afraid of revealing who knows what secret. They have reason to. In the action plans, those filed with the Ministry of the "phantom" ecological transition, they had with impunity declared miraculous consequences for Sardinia and the Sardinians, for the territories and for the "local" young people hungry for work. Words in the wind, made to astonish like snow in the sun. The VHF of two-way radios, however, does not reach everywhere. The journalistic blitz is articulated, simultaneously on several fronts, in the opposite poles of this never-ending construction site. When the first video recorder breaks into the construction site to the south, workers are spread across a plot of no less than 20 hectares. To "catch" the first foreign nucleus you have to get dusty on an old country road transformed into a highway for trucks and bulldozers. Everyone's gaze is synchronized downwards, in an attempt to evade the presence of foreigners who have come to scout out that now foreign land. The jacket is explicit: Matosca solar, tax headquarters in Valencia, authentic Spain. Anything but a Sardinian company. They are the first workers to reveal the mystery of Monte Arcosu: "aquí todos somos españoles" , "here, on this construction site, we are all Spanish". They don't speak a single word of Italian, but they understand it. They tell of Sardinian life in the land of photovoltaic panels: on site from seven thirty in the morning until seven in the morning. Life is scattered among inappropriate residences, between Capoterra, Uta, Assemini, but not only. The Spanish-branded minibuses with foreign license plates perform the function of the "solar bus", loading - unloading and returning, with many stops. Another nucleus, further east, towards the foothills, is in the hands of Solergy MontaJes, other Spaniards. This time tax residence in Villarrobledo, in the province of Albacete, in the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha.

All Spanish

They are more taciturn, they only respond to the national call: «Españoles». To find yet another organized foreign nucleus you have to come across an old farmhouse hastily left by the last farmer in the area as soon as the area was overturned by the JP Morgan " tsunami ". The “confession” is immediate: români , which stands for Romanians. When you ask them if they work for the Spanish companies on the construction sites next door, they reply angrily: “Green tech”. To find it you need to get to Strada Occidentului 39, Domnesti. Not a turn of the wheel, but 2,397 km traveled in no particular order to reach the Eldorado of Monte Arcosu by car from Romania. The small cars, "moored" in makeshift pitches, are marked by the faded flag of the Eastern country. They talk about colleagues from Ukraine and beyond, all located "in areas" in that infinite expanse of panels. The register of signatures in the guard booth in the Macchiareddu headquarters, however, seems like an attendance sheet from a repatriation center, from South Americans to solar men from the Maghreb. Everything and more. In the solar fields of Monte Arcosu, however, there are no Sardinians to be found. Only a few marginal tasks, difficult to identify.

Those of the "fast" trains

The JP Morgan shipyards, moreover, are entrusted as general contractor to a Spanish multinational, Caf Italia. The Italian appeal must not be deceived, the leading company is an entirely Spanish giant well known in Sardinia: the "Construcciones Y Auxiliar De Ferrocarriles - SA ", the "Construction and installations of railway carriages", the one that sold the famous trains " fast” to the Sardinian Region. Caf, the one registered in Italy, in charge of creating JP Morgan's large solar expanse, confirms in the first item of the company name: it builds, transforms, assembles, sells and exports any type of train. In the Cervo Oasis, in Monte Arcosu, however, they have built a dead end, that of development. Devastated landscape and environment, with Sardinians cut off. Only foreigners who come from far away work and earn here.

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