To get there you have to sight the horizon of the Marganai. A skyline of peaks that reach a thousand meters, skirting the entire Iglesiente side, close to the great Cixerri valley, between Iglesias and Domusnovas. Forests, the sacred mining texts recite, those that praise explosive raids to snatch that mineral clinging to the most ancient evolutions of rocks from the bowels of the earth. In this hermitage of nature, rich in water and forests like few others, it has been decades that the "sprints" of mines and quarries have ceased to break the silence of these ravines of oaks and mastic trees. Time has slowly returned those lands to its vocation.
Powder magazine & bombs
Protected areas, complete with decrees and laws. Site of community importance "Monte Linas-Marganai", sets out the European legislation applied in the land of Sardinia. Yet here, in the land disputed by wild boars and mouflons, deer and golden eagles, silence is about to shatter with the advance of the arms economy. There, where the ancient powder magazine stood in the seventies, later a civil explosives factory, especially for quarries and mines, now a real city of arms is breaking out. Barbed wire everywhere, cameras that leave no respite to the flocks and Sunday travelers. Forbidden land, miners' signs everywhere: no approaching.
Fort Knox with bombs
A sort of Fort Knox, armored like nothing else in the land of the Nuraghi. Unlike the large deposit of gold bars in American Kentucky, here the deadliest weapons of all are produced and kept, those that, if thrown from the sky, devastate villages and populations, hospitals and school buses. Here, a stone's throw from Oridda, to walk towards the summit of Punta San Michele, it is impossible not to perceive the weight of that abbreviation kept subdued at the entrance of that perimeter wall forged by impenetrable slabs of concrete. The acronym is marked as if in place of Eni, the last multinational to come to these parts, a new “hope” capable of guaranteeing work and development had settled. In place of the State Body came the Rwm, from the explosive used to dig at the bottom of the wells to the one used to fill those green casings with death. Rwm here means Germans, Germany and the war industry. In short, they are the ones who arm the Western armed forces and the unscrupulous ones of the Arab world. Beyond that curtain which is forbidden to prying eyes, it is impossible to enter. Nobody can know what is going on in there. The only chance to make a prying eye fly in that expanse of flocks and bombs, fields of alfalfa and expanses of holm oaks, is reserved for Sundays. Not for the Holy Mass, but for the ancient rite of hunting. Open gates to top the slopes and cast an indiscreet look on that valley now pierced by earthworks that burst like bulldozers at the foot of the Marganai.
Got it all
In total silence, with the discretion of the large arms multinationals, the Rwm has beaten everything, piece by piece. It has conquered meter after meter, hectare after hectare, an infinite expanse of land and new volumes. A real city of war that grew with the speed of light on the slopes of Oridda. Nobody here has seen anything but that golden eagle that flew over that massive new village of bombs and lethal weapons. The horizon towards the Cixerri plain is distorted, the massive excavations that can be seen from the top of the main ridge of the Marganai leave no doubt: the Rwm has transformed that small civil explosive factory into an immense headquarters, first to produce bombs, the more lethal, from the Mk80 to the Mk 84, and now to try them, right there in the door of the Marganai park. Too bad, however, that everything that was built with frightening speed is in fact all abusive. Not an opinion, not a biased technical assessment, not the usual "pain in the ass" against the industries of "death".
Without appeal
The pronouncement is written on the headed paper of the Council of State. In practice, the highest administrative court of justice. Unappealable, last degree of judgment. And they, the judges of the last instance, have left no way out. Before the 2059 appeal of 2021 proposed by the Italia Nostra associations, the basic trade union union for the Sardinia Region, Assotziu consumadoris Sardigna, they did not use half sentences. Their lawyer, Andrea Pubusa, a long-time professor of public law, did not take it well when the Sardinian TAR rejected the request of the associations to cancel the authorizations that the Municipality of Iglesias and the Sardinian Region had issued to the Rwm. The objection was simple and clear: you applied an administrative procedure for the construction of a real city of bombs equal to that for building a chicken coop. The TAR, however, had deemed the passages of the administrations correct, making the grandeur of what was actually taking place inside that barbed wire fencing fail. The second instance appeal was not long in coming.
The rematch
Circumstantiated and punctual, with a premise, we are not discussing the morality or otherwise of that factory. On the other hand, there are urban planning regulations and environmental provisions, there are dangers for public safety, for workers and for the effects on the territory. The appeal led by Graziano Bullegas on behalf of Italia Nostra, Marco Mameli for the Assotziu consumadoris Sardinia onlus and Enrico Rubiu for the basic union union, did not go downhill: the Rwm has divided its own into 21 extensions. intervention with the clear aim of avoiding the Environmental Impact Assessment, which is indispensable and required in the case of settlements of this magnitude. The latest operation, the one challenged by the Council of State, however, did not go unnoticed. The Rwm asked to build two new departments, R200 and R210, and in the meantime the Regional Council gave the green light for the construction of the "New Test Field R140". Not only huge expansion, but also, and above all, the construction of test fields for bombs.
Bombs to try
The same deadly explosive charges that devastated Yemen and its defenseless populations. Loads of death to be tested in their "test field" built right next to the Marganai, snatching the slopes close to San Marco and Matt'e Conti from that environmental heritage, a stone's throw from Domusnovas, but on the administrative island of the Municipality by Iglesias. Therefore, not a chicken coop, but a cyclopean factory of bombs complete with chemical procedures, declared by the same judicial technician, and verified by the State Council with its own expert.
War warheads
And after all, it is the company name filed with the Supreme Court that explains what the German factory on the slopes of the Marganai produces: "Rwm operates in the design, production and marketing of underwater weapon systems, marine influence mines, safety systems and armament, bombs and warheads ». In short, war and death occur here - the judges ascertained - and it is unthinkable that there was no Environmental Impact Assessment. Authorizations issued with a simple conference of services, for the Council of State, are outlawed. There was much more to examine: with an in-depth study that should not have ignored fundamental elements given the grandeur of the proposed intervention, both on the chemical side, with the demonstration of modification of the components of explosives, and for the lack of requirements environmental and urban planning. The sentence of the Council of State is very harsh: "On the merits the complaints with which the appellants deduced that both the expansion project of the plant through the construction of the two new departments R200 and R210 and that relating to the construction of the Test Field 140 (as it is functionally connected to the former), they should have been subjected to a mandatory EIA ". The Council of State ruled: these are to all intents and purposes "integrated chemical plants, ie plants for the production on an industrial scale, through chemical transformation processes, of substances, in which various production units functionally connected to each other are located side by side" . The attempt to circumvent the rule is rejected without appeal.
Region rejected
The rejection is clear also for the Region. The judges write: "examining the impact of Test Field 140, the Region has not considered that it will be functionally connected to the departments in which the production of explosives takes place". Gross errors, not trifles. "Rwm Italia - it is written in the sentence - plans to test the same materials used and produced in the Domusnovas / Iglesias plant in the polygon (bomb test field)". The functional connection between the test field and the construction of the new R200 and R210 Departments constitute, for the Council of State, a real integrated chemical plant and entails the need to include this intervention in the expansion project to be subjected to mandatory EIA.
Tomb stone
The sentence is a gravestone: «Failure to submit to VIA determines the cancellation of the following contested measures, both the one authorizing the R200 and R210 wards in Iglesias, Loc. San Marco and that of the“ Nuovo Campo Prove R140 ”. It follows the acceptance of the appeal and the cancellation of the two fundamental acts: the provision of the Municipality of Iglesias and the resolution of the Sardinian Region. Therefore, the sentence cannot be appealed. There is one element, however, which will not fail to raise some importance. The day after the sentence, with perfect timing, the Rwm communicated the end of the works to the Municipality of Iglesias. What the Council of State has canceled has already been achieved, in record time. Andrea Pubusa, the lawyer and professor, however, wasted no time.
Demolish the abuses
The letter sent to the Municipality of Iglesias is clear: «we ask you to promptly execute the final sentence by adopting the orders for the suspension of the works and demolition in relation to the works carried out by the soc. Rwm ". Suspension of the works is no longer possible. The demolition remains. The Municipality of Iglesias, however, replies: there is still the possibility of challenging the judges of the Council of State and an amnesty procedure. You know, the ways to weapons and bombs are endless.
