Of conquests, ethnic cleansing and a tourist trade

It was the little old man who first caught our attention on one of the adventures in the old town.

He was certainly old enough to have remembered those days when the place was bombed in 1943.

But more than that he had the sort of face and expression that would not have been out of place at any time in the last 300 years of Alghero’s history.

I rather fancied he was one of the 22% of the town’s population which spoke a version of Catalan.

Now we were in an Italian town on an Italian island which first came under the control of part of Italy in the 18th century.

But you don’t buck history that easily and for 400 years our town had been under the less than tender care of Catalonia and then united Spain who were quick to put down revolts by the people of the town eventually indulging in a bit of ethnic cleansing, where the indigenous inhabitants were moved out and Catalan settlers moved in.

I have yet to discover what happened to them and I doubt I will.  History is less than bothered with the defeated, and it is something like 800 years ago.  So put the two together and these original inhabitants don’t even warrant a full stop in a history of Alghero.

But the fort or at least bits of it still stand as witness to the importance of this spot on the north western side of Sardinia.  To the east of the island is Rome and further south Naples and Sicily.  Even to me the strategic importance of Alghero is obvious.  For the cities of Genova, and Pisa it was an important trading centre and later for anyone wanting to oversee the trade routes you could do worse than have a fortified presence at this point on the island.

So back to our old man in the Carrer de Petuna, Via Columbano.  Even if he remembered the bombing of 1943 he would have not been born when the Fascist government drained the marshes, although it would be under a democratic Italian government that the mosquito would be eradicated in the 1950s.

Which no doubt helped when the tourist trade took off.

Now I have been to areas where mosquitos still flourish and while they do not trouble me, I know the misery they can bring.  At best it is the perpetual nightly preparations of spry and tablets, and at worse sleepless nights and painful bites.

So I wonder just how much of this recent history this old man has witnessed and what he made of it.
Certainly tourism has brought money.  The sprawl of holiday apartments and the profusion of restaurants are testimony to this.  As are the large numbers of gift shops.

But beneath the entire tourist buzz you can see things are not all that they seem to be.  Away from the old town along the way to the apartments the restaurants are empty and even in the old town many shops display sale signs offering up to 50% off and this before we reach the high season.

So maybe this is the return to tougher times, but nothing like the Italy before the 1950s.  Then there was real grinding poverty for many, where life was played out under the control of powerful landlords, and later Fascist thugs.

All of which is a long way from our cheerful afternoon’s walk in the streets of the old town.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson