Mandas

The name of Mandas, already recorded in the thirteenth century, comes from the Sardinian mandara and the Latin mandra, the pen for livestock, and the coat of arms duly carries seven ears of wheat and a sheep. From a pen, though, the village climbed high: it was the chief town of the curatoria of Siurgus after Siurgus itself, it sent its representatives to the parliament that Peter IV of Aragon summoned to Cagliari in 1355, and in 1604 the marquisate that held the towns of the curatoria together was turned into a duchy. The first duke, Pietro Maza de Carroz, appointed by Philip III of Spain, died without heirs three years later.

The duchy of Mandas ended only with feudalism itself, bought out from the last duke in 1839. The parish church of San Giacomo stands at the edge of the built-up area, turned towards the fields and closed in by a high wall: behind its sixteenth-century Catalan Gothic it keeps the work of Spanish and local carvers, a wooden group with the crucifix, the Madonna and Saint John, and altars of carved and gilded wood. In January 1921 David Herbert Lawrence stopped here on his way to Sorgono, and the halt found its way into Sea and Sardinia. Trains for Sorgono still leave the station, but today they are the tourist trains of the Trenino Verde.