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The Maddalena archipelago — a scattering of small islands situated between Corsica to the north and the Sardinian mainland to the southwest — has long been a magnet for those with anarchic, outsider streaks.
During the Middle Ages and the early modern period, inhabitants of the Maddalena included pirates, smugglers and black-market traders, who were attracted to the islands because of their remote location, lack of permanent settlers, and the archipelago’s often ambiguous legal and territorial status. It was even the case that, after being exiled to the small island of Caprera in 1849, the revered military commander and revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi spent many of the last years of his life in the Maddalena.
In modern times and in the era of mass tourism, the Maddalena has taken on a more establishment flavor. Up until 2008, the archipelago was home to a NATO naval base, and these days you’re much more likely to spot a celebrity’s yacht cruising the area’s clear waters than a pirate ship. But the man most closely associated with the Maddalena over the last three decades — until his death at 85 this January — is someone whose spirit is far more closely aligned with the archipelago’s earlier history.
Who was Mauro Morandi?
When, in 1989, Mauro Morandi first set sail for the Maddalena aboard his catamaran, he had no idea that it would be where he was to live out most of the rest of his life forging a path as both an inspirational environmentalist and the long-term custodian of the archipelago’s second smallest island.
Morandi had intended to spend that summer ferrying tourists around the archipelago, saving up money to fund his trip to Polynesia, where he had set his sights on moving permanently. A former school gym teacher with a rebellious nature, Morandi had grown disillusioned with what he considered “a society that does not take the individual into account, but thinks only of power and money.” He was tired of life in Modena, the small city in Emilia-Romagna where he was born and where had spent the first half of his life. He wanted to escape.
Not long after arriving in the Maddalena, Morandi found himself on Budelli, a tiny, spellbindingly beautiful island famed for its unique Spiaggia Rosa (Pink Beach), which featured in the Antonioni film Il deserto rosso (The Red Desert). There he met the then-custodians of the island, who by sheer coincidence were set to retire a few days afterward. “And that’s how I took [their] place and found my Polynesia here,” Morandi would later reflect.
Island life wasn’t for everyone. Morandi’s predecessors, a married couple who had lived on Budelli for three and a half years, struggled to adjust to the contrast between the near-total solitude of the winter months and the hubbub of the island during the peak tourism season. But for Morandi, it was a dream job. On Budelli, he could cultivate his budding passion for nature and be left largely alone to think, read and explore the archipelago’s abundant geographical riches.
The philosophy of a hermit-environmentalist-educator
Given the volume of visitors arriving in the Maddalena each summer, it is understandable that Morandi’s attitude toward tourism — at least during his first years on Budelli — was one of outright hostility. It’s unclear exactly how many of Sardinia’s roughly 3.5 million annual visitors stop by the archipelago itself, but the numbers are generally considered to be untenable.
In practical terms, this means that during his time on Budelli, Morandi bore witness to the deterioration — as seen so often elsewhere in Italy and Europe — that occurs when fragile environments and communities are exposed to an industry that typically puts profit above sustainability.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on the Spiaggia Rosa itself. Since the 1990s, the beach has been blocked off to tourists, but this protective measure was too little, too late: for years it was a common ritual for tourists to fill jars with the famous “sand” and take them home as souvenirs. As a result, the beach has permanently lost much of its vibrant pink color. “Society pushes us to desire the beautiful things that you see,” noted Morandi in an interview a few years before he died. “When you see them, you must have them, buy them, possess them, accumulate them. But in this way, you destroy the world.”
Despite his initial antagonism toward tourism, Morandi’s stance in later years began to soften as he started to realize the potential educational benefits of engaging with — rather than ignoring — visitors to the island.
In 2019, Morandi published a memoir in which, against the backdrop of his life story, he outlined the philosophy behind this shift. “Tourism isn’t always a bad thing. Traveling broadens the horizons, widens consciousness, makes us more tolerant... But it’s necessary to know how to do it. And our society hasn’t taught us how to be conscientious travelers. On the contrary, it tells us to be vociferous consumers…And it’s this attitude…that makes us destroy everything.” This line of thinking led Morandi to begin to openly interact with the visitors he came across on the island, in the hope of spreading his conservationist message.
A castaway in the age of social media
But Morandi’s relationship with the outside world reached far beyond his summer interactions with tourists and journalists on the island. His decision to join Instagram and other social media in 2015 allowed him to broaden his reach, and he went on to acquire tens of thousands of followers across each of his accounts. Morandi used this global platform to further promote his environmentalism and sustainability campaigns, as well as exploring his interest in photography and sharing the beauty of the island with the world.
Although only a relatively small number of determined (and sufficiently affluent) people have been able to travel to Budelli and meet the man himself, Morandi’s global following online attests to a type of fascination that transcends the obvious appeal of Instagram-friendly snapshots of pink sunsets and exotic beach vistas.
How should we understand Morandi’s appeal? On a deeper level, Morandi’s story is tantalizing for the same reasons that, ever since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, we in the West have been captivated by tales of desert island castaways and pirate utopias. Today, our anxieties center on environmental catastrophe and the social and political crises caused by rising inequality and disinformation. But our yearning to live “outside of society” or “off the grid,” away from what triggers our unease, is the same as what it was 200 years ago. After all, a good antidote to living in a sick society is to escape from it entirely, and Morandi’s life represents one version of that liberation.
Budelli after Morandi
Morandi’s time on Budelli came to an unwanted end a few years before his death when, after several decades of private ownership, the island was put back in public hands. This effectively rendered obsolete the custodian role that had sustained Morandi’s life on Budelli for the previous three decades, and after a protracted and painful legal battle, he was finally evicted from the island in 2021. He died four years later in his hometown of Modena.
According to Dr. Tiziano Antognozzi, a researcher in cultural economics at the G. d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, Budelli’s transfer from private to public ownership represents two contrasting approaches to the management and preservation of fragile, tourism-heavy locations like the Maddalena. The former approach — as exemplified by the caretaker role on Budelli — potentially offers less transparency and accountability but allows for trailblazing individuals like Morandi to pursue a “deeper connection with nature” and to “challenge societal habits, biases and the comforts that keep us from an honest relationship with the environment.” On the other hand, Budelli’s current status as a publicly owned and managed site offers “a clear, logical framework designed to preserve fragile ecosystems for the common good.”
“Today,” argues Dr. Antognozzi, “the real risk is that over-tourism erodes both [approaches], leaving neither space for those who wish to live freely in nature, nor for those who seek to preserve it.” This speaks to what is perhaps Morandi’s greatest legacy. Thanks to his ability to communicate a form of environmental advocacy that was honest and uncompromising yet humble and unpatronizing, Morandi helped to inject into the collective imagination a more conscientious way of seeing and experiencing the marvels of the world.
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