INSPIRATION

A village with an exotic name, among the cultivated fields of the Trexenta, whose existence many Sardinians in the north doubt. Originally the name was Pramantellu, still present in the entrance sign on which, according to a ritual that has been perpetuated for more than a year, I place the sticker 377, a subversive mark of my passage.

In even more ancient times there were two villages, Nuraxi and Saceni, separated by a stream and today united in a single village. I am taken over by the deputy mayor Luca and the traffic warden Gianpaolo, with whom we go to visit the necropolis of Corongiu, a site of domus de janas, some of which can be visited inside, and which have mysterious spiral symbols.

Also in the site of S’Acqua Salida, also called Pranu Efis, there are other tombs, dominated by deep engravings in the rocks. Next to the site a strange esplanade bears the signs of the geometrically excavated rock, the ancient Punic-Roman quarries.

At Cristian’s kiosk the day takes a different turn. While it’s raining outside, friends, musicians, amateurs gather, Patrizio who organised the day, Luca, Piero and Maria Giovanna who will host me tonight. We drink and play a reverse rain dance, a music to wear out the sky that only after many hours gives us a rest and the opportunity to visit Sa Ruta, the grotto dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes, a site that with the lights of the sunset takes on a strange mystical aura.

SOUND FRAGMENTS

SARDINIAN SHORT STORIES

There is a curious story linked to the church of Nostra Signora del Carmine. Here is preserved an old pipe organ produced by the Piras company, founded here in Pimentel in 1883 by Giuseppino Piras. The story goes that he began to build organs thanks to three small volumes and an atlas on the construction techniques of the pipe organ received as a gift from a Franciscan friar, Antonio Porqueddu, ‘master organ builder’ of the convent of San Salvatore in Jerusalem, in exchange of twenty kilos of wheat. The last organ builder of the Piras company was Raffaele Piras, who taught the art to Giuseppe Palmas who in 1954 founded the Arte Organaria Sarda company in Segariu.

Today they also talk to me about a certain Giulio Sollai, originally from Pimentel but who now lives in Turin, and who would have traveled the world twice. A piece of information that I could not expand to a ‘short story’ but which deserves to be deepened!