Buggerru

Buggerru was born in 1864 with the mines, and at the beginning of the 20th century it had five times as many people as today. In those years they called it petit Paris: the managers of the Société des mines de Malfidano of Paris, which had its Sardinian operating base here, had moved in with their families and built themselves a world. Achille Georgiades, a Greek from Constantinople, arrived in 1903 to run the mines; the Frenchman Georges Perrier kept a cinema; there were a theatre and a club reserved for the company's élite. Below them the miners worked underpaid, on murderous shifts and with frequent fatal accidents, and were organised in the Federazione dei minatori.

In 1904, after Georgiades tightened their conditions, the miners refused to work and put their demands to the French company. The answer was to call in the army, which opened fire on the workers: three dead and many wounded. That Sunday, 4 September 1904, is remembered as the eccidio di Buggerru, and for it the first general strike in the history of Italy was called. Buggerru became a comune of its own only in 1960, detaching from Fluminimaggiore. Today the village looks at the sea from the mouth of the Malfidano valley, its houses set out in a fan; around it lie the mining villages in ruins, the Henry gallery, and cliffs that above Pranu Sartu reach 122 metres.