“Italian Robinson Crusoe” Refuses to Leave Paradise Island After 32 Years – VG

It was sheer coincidence that led Italian Mauro Morandi (81) to Budelli, north of Sardinia, Italy, in 1989.

He said the former gym teacher was on a sailing trip with a desert island in Polynesia as a destination, when he accidentally came across the Italian island of Paradise, he said. In a 2018 BBC interview.

Coincidentally, the island keeper at the time retired after only a few days and needed a successor. So the 50-year-old Morandi decided to stay and take on the job of island guard.

– I sold my boat and lived here since I was a faithful guardian of Bodily, as Morandi said in an interview with the Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad earlier this week.

Tourists flocked to

At the start of Morandi’s stay on the then privately owned island, tourists flocked during the day. On some days there were as many as 3,000 tourists on the island.

In 1994, the island was sold and converted into a national park. He has placed significant restrictions on how many people can visit the island and where they can go to the island.

In 2020, the president of La Madalena National Park, Fabrizio Funeso, told CNN that Morandi had made illegal alterations to the cabin where the guardian of the island lived, a former WWII radio station.

It is this director who has now asked Morandi to find a new home.

Turned – refuses to leave the island

Several major media outlets around the world wrote last week that Mauro Morandi will now leave Podilli after 32 years. last Sunday Tell Morandi for the Guardian He will move to an apartment on a nearby island.

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On Wednesday this week, the 81-year-old said he has now changed his mind and will not give up fighting for the island. He will fight with his last power until he is allowed to stay.

– Yes, I know it’s written. But this is probably not entirely true. I’m still struggling to survive. We all have a place in the world, and my place is here in Bodily. I will soon have a chat with the director of the national park. So I still hope we can find a solution, Morandi Kristeligt told Dagblad.

– I completely agree with Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky that beauty will save the world. Then I hope that mankind will be able to save beauty. Also Budelli beauty.