Our last days in Sardinia were spent in Alghero and Stintino along the North West Coast. Alghero is the prettiest place we have visited in Sardinia and as a consequence it has become a real tourist mecca. The Centro Storico, is all cobbled alleys, ancient churches, smart restaurants and jazzy nautical boutiques rising up from the seafront which is decorated in symmetrically-arrayed umbrellas and sunbeds, moored boats and ferries, and endless designer bars and restaurants.
Gypsy buskers and African hawkers selling trinkets and frippery are abroad from sunrise to sunset. How these poor guys eke out any living beats me. Victor makes his living on a ladder, painting the ceiling of Saint Barbara's Orthodox church in the old town. He has been touching up work he started twenty-two years ago, keeping it bright and brilliant, like his mood. A local wine grower sells his wine stock from classy bowsers, like diesel, so proud of his produce. Along the waterfront agile men on little boats slip out to re-supply the restaurant trade with the local seafood delicacy, lobster. Further along a sandcastle artist lays out his jaunty hat in the hope of collecting coins to promote his independent art. A dicey way to make a living if it rains.
There is little that is terribly Italian about Alghero, in fact about any part of Sardinia, really. Along the passeggiata seawalk, you could be forgiven for thinking you are in San Sebastian in Spain. Added to which much of the signage is stubbornly replicated in Catalan, so blended is the history.
Stintino, one of the last villages flung onto the headland in the north west was a special visit. The families now living here are descended from about 45 families who were forcibly moved from their island, just offshore, in 1885, when it was needed as a quarantine outpost.
To survive, these families took to tuna fishing. When tuna headed to their mating grounds in vast numbers, these fisherfolk would lead them into their long complex nets, called tonnara, shaped like elongated funnels and mazelike. Tuna would enter these nets, find themselves trapped in its tricky chambers and be unable to escape.
Then, in these blue blue waters of the Mediterranean with its rich history of invaders, marauders and pirates, these fisherfolk took to their captives with harpoons, in a dance of death and slaughter called the mattanza, until the sea ran red with blood. What a way to make a living.
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