The sea is everywhere, it is obvious on an island, but at Asinara the sea is in the dreams, in the human lives and in the stories of those who have lived there. Gianfranco Massidda, now 89 years old, was the last keeper of the Punta Scorno lighthouse, named Santiago after the protagonist of The old man and the sea.
He was only four days old when he landed at Asinara and from 1964 until 1986, the lighthouse operator hired for competition remained there to watch over the island. His stories, fears, difficulties, are contained in the volume presented yesterday at the headquarters of the Asinara National Park. The book "Once upon a time in Asinara" is by Giampaolo Cassitta, an educator on the island from 1985 to 1998, the year of the definitive closure of the prison. From fascism to the first post-war period the stories are endless, each one different from the other, each one is an encounter, with prison inmates, with shipwrecked survivors saved by the lighthouse operator himself, and then the dangers, the explosions during the war and the daily relationships with the sea.
A life fictionalized by the author of the book, presented by the director of the park, Vittorio Gazale and the journalist Gianni Bazzoni. Gianfranco Massidda, who with his family on the second floor of the tower of the Punta Scorno lighthouse, says that he was ten years old and that he was not at the lighthouse when at 3.10 pm on 9 September 1943 he witnessed the sinking of the battleship Roma.
"I was at Punta Sabina but I always indicated the precise coordinates of the point of its sinking," underlines the lighthouse operator. "There are stories that reveal never revealed truths such as, for example, some successful escapes, but always officially hidden," said the author Cassitta. «It is the tale of an island, of the last of the lighthouses, of a lighthouse, and of a great love for the sea».