Sardinia has been inhabited by humans since the end of the
Paleolithic era, around 20–10,000 years ago. The island's most notable civilization is the indigenous
Nuragic, which flourished from the 18th century BC to either 238 BC or the 2nd century AD in some parts of the island, and to the 6th century AD in that part of the island known as
Barbagia. After a period in which the island was ruled by a political and economic alliance between the Nuragic Sardinians and the
Phoenicians, parts of it were conquered by
Carthage in the late 6th century BC, and by
Rome in 238 BC. The Roman occupation lasted for 700 years. Beginning in the
Early Middle Ages, the island was ruled by the
Vandals and the
Byzantines. In practice, the island was disconnected from Byzantium's territorial influence, which allowed the Sardinians to provide themselves with a self-ruling political organization, the four kingdoms known as
Judicates. The
Italian maritime republics of
Pisa and
Genoa struggled to impose political control over these indigenous kingdoms, but it was the Iberian
Crown of Aragon which, in 1324, succeeded in bringing the island under its control, consolidating it into the
Kingdom of Sardinia. This Iberian kingdom endured until 1713 and, for the last time, in 1718, when it was ceded to the
Alpine House of Savoy; the Savoyards would
politically merge their insular possession with their domains on the
Italian Mainland which, during the period of
Italian unification, they would go on to expand to include the whole Italian peninsula; their territory was so renamed into the
Kingdom of Italy in 1861, and it was reconstituted as the present-day
Italian Republic in 1946.
Prehistory (5.75 meters high) Sardinia is one of the most geologically ancient bodies of land in Europe. The island was populated in various waves of immigration from prehistory until recent times. Remains from
Corbeddu Cave in eastern Sardinia have been suggested by some authors to represent the earliest evidence of human presence on Sardinia, around 20,000 years ago, during the
Last Glacial Maximum. However, other authors contend that there is no solid evidence for the occupation of the island until the early
Mesolithic, around 10,000 years ago. The
Neolithic began on Sardinia during the
6th millennium BC resulting from the migration of
Early European Farmers, replacing the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer populations, with a material culture including the widespread
Cardium pottery style. In the mid-Neolithic period, the
Ozieri culture, probably of
Aegean origin, flourished on the island spreading the
hypogeum tombs known as
domus de Janas, while the
Arzachena culture of
Gallura built the first
megaliths: circular tombs. In the early 3rd millennium BC, the
metallurgy of
copper and
silver began to develop. During the late
Chalcolithic the so-called
Beaker culture, coming from various parts of
Continental Europe, appeared in Sardinia. These new people predominantly settled on the west coast, where the majority of the sites attributed to them had been found. The Beaker culture was followed in the early
Bronze Age by the
Bonnanaro culture which showed both reminiscences of the Beaker and influences by the
Polada culture. As time passed the different Sardinian populations appear to have become united in customs, yet remained politically divided into various small, tribal groupings, at times banding together against invading forces from the sea, and at others waging war against each other. Habitations consisted of round thatched stone huts.
Nuragic civilization From about 1500 BC onwards, villages were built around a kind of round tower-fortress called
nuraghe (usually pluralized as
nuraghes in English and as in Italian). These towers were often reinforced and enlarged with battlements. Tribal boundaries were guarded by smaller lookout Nuraghes erected on strategic hills commanding a view of other territories. Today, some 7,000 Nuraghes dot the Sardinian landscape. While initially these Nuraghes had a relatively simple structure, with time they became extremely complex and monumental (see for example the
Nuraghe Santu Antine,
Su Nuraxi, or
Nuraghe Arrubiu). The scale, complexity and territorial spread of these buildings attest to the level of wealth accumulated by the Nuragic Sardinians, their advances in technology and the complexity of their society, which was able to coordinate large numbers of people with different roles for the purpose of building the monumental Nuraghes. in
Dorgali (
Bronze Age) The Nuraghes are not the only Nuragic buildings that stand in place, as there are several sacred wells around Sardinia and other buildings with religious purposes such as the
Giants' grave (monumental collective tombs) and collections of religious buildings that probably served as destinations for pilgrimage and mass religious rites (e.g.
Su Romanzesu near
Bitti). At the time, Sardinia was at the centre of several commercial routes and it was an important provider of raw materials such as
copper and lead, which were pivotal for the manufacture of the time. By controlling the extraction of these raw materials and by trading them with other countries, the ancient Sardinians were able to accumulate wealth and reach a level of sophistication that is not only reflected in the complexity of its surviving buildings, but also in its artworks (e.g. the votive
bronze statuettes found across Sardinia or the statues of Mont'e Prama). According to some scholars, the Nuragic people(s) are identifiable with the
Sherden, a tribe of the
Sea Peoples. In the 6th century BC, after the conquest of western Sicily, the
Carthaginians planned to annex Sardinia. A first invasion attempt led by
Malchus was foiled by the victorious Nuraghic resistance. However, from 510 BC, the southern and west-central part of the island were invaded a second time and came under Carthaginian rule. of
Forum Traiani, in what is now
Fordongianus In 238 BC, taking advantage of Carthage having to face a rebellion of her mercenaries (the
Mercenary War) after the
First Punic War (264–241 BC), the
Romans annexed Corsica and Sardinia from the Carthaginians. The two islands became the province of
Corsica and Sardinia. They were not given a provincial governor until 227 BC. The Romans faced many rebellions, and it took them many years to pacify both islands. The existing coastal cities were enlarged and embellished, and Roman
colonies such as
Turris Lybissonis and
Feronia were founded. These were populated by Roman immigrants. The Roman military occupation brought the Nuragic civilization to an end, except for the mountainous interior of the island, which the Romans called
Barbaria, meaning '
Barbarian land'. Roman rule in Sardinia lasted 694 years, during which time the province was an important source of grain for the capital.
Latin came to be the dominant spoken language during this period, though Roman culture was slower to take hold, and Roman rule was often contested by the Sardinian tribes from the mountainous regions.
Vandal conquest The
East Germanic tribe of the
Vandals conquered Sardinia in 456. Their rule lasted for 78 years until 534 when, in the
Vandalic War, 400
Eastern Roman troops led by Cyril, one of the officers of the
foederati, retook the island. It is known that the Vandal government continued the forms of the existing Roman Imperial structure. The governor of Sardinia continued to be called the
praeses and apparently continued to manage military, judicial, and civil governmental functions via imperial procedures. The only Vandal governor of Sardinia about whom there is substantial record is the last,
Godas, a
Visigoth noble. In AD 530, a
coup d'état in
Carthage removed King
Hilderic, a convert to
Nicene Christianity, in favor of his cousin
Gelimer, an
Arian Christian like most of the elite in his kingdom. Godas was sent to take charge and ensure the loyalty of Sardinia. He did the exact opposite, declaring the island's independence from Carthage and opening negotiations with Emperor
Justinian I, who had declared war on Hilderic's behalf. In AD 533, Gelimer sent the bulk of his army and navy (120 vessels and 5,000 men) to Sardinia to subdue Godas, with the catastrophic result that the Vandal Kingdom was overwhelmed when Justinian's own army under
Belisarius arrived at Carthage in their absence. The Vandal Kingdom ended and Sardinia was returned to Roman rule.
Byzantine era and the rise of the Judicates In 533, Sardinia returned to the rule of the
Byzantine Empire when the
Vandals were defeated by the armies of
Justinian I under the General
Belisarius in the
Battle of Tricamarum, in their African kingdom Belisarius sent his general Cyril to Sardinia to retake the island. Sardinia remained in Byzantine hands for the next 300 years aside from a short period in which it was invaded by the
Ostrogoths in 551. Under Byzantine rule, the island was divided into districts called
mereíai (μερείαι) in
Byzantine Greek, which were governed by a judge residing in Caralis and garrisoned by an army stationed in
Forum Traiani (today
Fordongianus) under the command of a
dux. During this time,
Christianity took deeper root on the island, supplanting the
Paganism which had survived into the early
Middle Ages in the culturally conservative hinterlands. Along with lay Christianity, the followers of monastic figures such as
Basil of Caesarea became established in Sardinia. While Christianity penetrated the majority of the population, the region of
Barbagia remained largely pagan and, probably, partially non-Latin speaking. They re-established a short-lived independent domain with Sardinian-heathen lay and religious traditions, one of its kings being
Hospito.
Pope Gregory I wrote a letter to Hospito defining him "Dux Barbaricinorum" and, being Christian, the leader and best of his people. In this unique letter about Hospito, the Pope prompts him to convert his people who "living all like irrational animals, ignore the true God and worship wood and stone" (). The dates and circumstances of the end of Byzantine rule in Sardinia are not known. Direct central control was maintained at least through , after which local legates were empowered in the face of the rebellion of
Gregory the Patrician,
Exarch of Africa and the first invasion of the
Muslim conquest of the Maghreb. There is some evidence that senior Byzantine administration in the Exarchate of Africa retreated to Caralis following the final fall of
Carthage to the
Arabs in 697. The loss of imperial control in Africa led to escalating raids by
Arabs on the island, the first of which is documented in 703, forcing increased military self-reliance in the province. Elsewhere in the central Mediterranean, the
Aghlabids conquered the island of
Malta in 870. They also attacked or raided Sardinia and
Corsica. Some modern references state that Sardinia came under Aghlabid control around 810 or after the beginning of the conquest of Sicily in 827. Historian Corrado Zedda argues that the island hosted a Muslim presence during the Aghlabid period, possibly a limited foothold along the coasts that forcibly coexisted with the local Byzantine government. Historian Alex Metcalfe argues that the available evidence for any Muslim occupation or colonisation of the island during this period is limited and inconclusive, and that Muslim attacks were limited to raids. who probably reigned between the 10th and the 11th century. These rulers were still closely linked to the Byzantines, both for a pact of ancient vassalage, and from the ideological point of view, with the use of the
Byzantine Greek language (in a
Romance country), and the use of art of Byzantine inspiration. in
Porto Torres in
Codrongianos In the early 11th century, an
attempt to conquer the island was made by
Mujahid al-Amiri al-Ṣaqlabī, the
ruler of Dénia and the Balearic Islands based in the
Iberian Peninsula. The only records of that war are from Pisan and Genoese chronicles. The Christians won but, after that, the previous Sardinian kingdom was undermined and subsequently divided into four smaller states: Cagliari (
Calari), Arborea (
Arbaree), Gallura, and Torres or Logudoro. Whether this final transformation from imperial civil servant to independent sovereign bodies resulted from imperial abandonment or local assertion, by the 10th century, the so-called "Judges" ( / , a Byzantine administrative title) had emerged as the autonomous rulers of Sardinia. The title of changed with the language and local understanding of the position, becoming the Sardinian , essentially a king or sovereign, while
Judicate () came to mean 'state'. Early medieval Sardinian political institutions evolved from the millennium-old Roman imperial structures with relatively little Germanic influence. Although the
Judicates were hereditary lordships, the old Byzantine imperial notion that personal title or honor was separate from the state still remained, so the Judicate was not regarded as the personal property of the monarch as was common in later European
feudalism. Like the imperial systems, the new order also preserved "semi-democratic" forms, with national assemblies called the
Crown of the Realm. Each Judicate saw to its own defense, maintained its own laws and administration, and looked after its own foreign and trading affairs. The history of the four Judicates would be defined by the contest for influence between the two Italian
maritime powers of
Genoa and
Pisa, and later the ambitions of the
Crown of Aragon. The
Judicate of Cagliari or
Pluminos, during the regency of
Torchitorio V of Cagliari and his successor,
William III, was allied with the
Republic of Genoa. Because of this it was brought to an end in 1258, when its capital,
Santa Igia, was stormed and destroyed by an alliance of Sardinian and Pisan forces. The territory then was divided between the
Republic of Pisa, the
Della Gherardesca family from Italy, and the Sardinian Judicates of Arborea and Gallura. Pisa maintained the control over the fortress of Castel di Cagliari founded by Pisan merchants in 1216–1217 east of Santa Igia; in the south-west the count
Ugolino della Gherardesca promoted the birth of the town of
Villa di Chiesa (today
Iglesias) to exploit the nearby rich
silver deposits. The
Judicate of Logudoro (also called
Torres) was also allied to the
Republic of Genoa and came to an end in 1259 after the death of the (queen)
Adelasia. The territory was divided up between the
Doria and Malaspina families of
Genoa and the Bas-Serra family of
Arborea, while the city of
Sassari became
a small republic, along the lines of the
Italian city-states (
comuni),
confederated firstly with Pisa and then with Genoa. The
Judicate of Gallura ended in the year 1288, when the last giudice,
Nino Visconti (a friend of
Dante Alighieri), was driven out by the Pisans, who occupied the territory. The
Judicate of Arborea, having
Oristano as its capital, had the longest life compared to the other kingdoms. Its later history is entwined with the attempt to unify the island into a single Sardinian state ( 'Sardinian Republic' in Sardinian, or 'Sardinian Nation' in Catalan) against their relatives and former
Aragonese allies.
Aragonese period In 1297,
Pope Boniface VIII established on his own initiative (
motu proprio) a hypothetical
regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae ("
Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica") in order to settle the
War of the Sicilian Vespers diplomatically. This had broken out in 1282 between the
Capetian House of Anjou and
Aragon over the possession of Sicily. Despite the existence of the indigenous states, the Pope offered this newly created crown to
James II of Aragon, promising him support should he wish to conquer Pisan Sardinia in exchange for Sicily. . The Sassarese republic lasted from 1272 until 1323, when it sided with the new born Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1324, in alliance with the Kingdom of Arborea and following a
military campaign that lasted a year or so, the Aragon Crown Prince
Alfonso led an Aragonese army that occupied the Pisan territories of Cagliari and Gallura along with the allied city of Sassari, naming them "The Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica". The kingdom was to remain a dominion of the Crown of Aragon (under the 16th-century kings of Spain) until the
Peace of Utrecht. During this period, the Judicate of Arborea promulgated the legal code of the kingdom in the
Carta de Logu ('Charter of the Land'). The Carta de Logu was originally compiled by
Marianus IV of Arborea, and was amended and updated by Mariano's daughter, Female Judge ( or )
Eleanor of Arborea. The legal code was written in
Sardinian and established a whole range of citizens' rights. Among the revolutionary concepts in this Carta de Logu was the right of women to refuse marriage and to own property. In terms of civil liberties, the code made provincial 14th century Sardinia one of the most developed societies in all of Europe. In 1353,
Peter IV of Aragon, following
Catalan-Aragonese customs, granted a parliament to the kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica, which was followed by some degree of self-government under a viceroy and judicial independence. This parliament, however, had limited powers. It consisted of high-ranking military commanders, the clergy and the nobility. The Crown of Aragon also introduced the
feudal system into the areas of Sardinia that it ruled. The Sardinian Judicates never adopted feudalism, and Arborea maintained its parliament, called the
Corona de Logu 'Crown of the Realm'. In this parliament, apart from the nobles and military commanders, also sat the representatives of each township and village. The Corona de Logu exercised some control over the king: under the rule of the
bannus consensus the king could be deposed or even executed if he did not follow the rules of the kingdom. in
Oristano Having broken the alliance with the Crown of Aragon, from 1353 to 1409, the Arborean giudici
Marianus IV,
Hugh III and
Brancaleone Doria (husband of
Eleanor of Arborea), succeeded in occupying all of Sardinia except the heavily fortified towns of the Castle of
Cagliari and
Alghero, which for years remained as the only Aragonese dominions in Sardinia (
Sardinian–Catalan war). In 1409,
Martin I of Sicily, king of Sicily and heir to the crown of Aragon, defeated the Sardinians at the
Battle of Sanluri. The battle was fought by about 20,000 Sardinian, Genoese and French knights, enrolled from their kingdom at a time when the population of Sardinia had been greatly depleted by the plague. Despite the Sardinian army outnumbering the Aragonese army, they were defeated. The Judicate of Arborea disappeared in 1420, when its rights were sold by the last king for 100,000
gold florins, and after some of its most notable men switched sides in exchange for privileges. For example, Leonardo Cubello, with some claim to the crown being from a family related to the Kings of Arborea, was granted the title of
Marquis of Oristano and feudal rights on a territory that partly overlapped with the original extension of the Kingdom of Arborea in exchange for his subjection to the
Aragonese monarchs. The conquest of Sardinia by the
Crown of Aragon meant the introduction of the feudal system throughout Sardinia. Thus Sardinia is probably the only European country where feudalism was introduced in the transition period from the Middle Ages to the
early modern period, at a time when feudalism had already been abandoned by many other European countries.
Spanish period called
Torre della Pelosa In 1469, the heir to Sardinia,
Ferdinand II of Aragon, married
Isabel of Castile, and the "
Kingdom of Sardinia" (which was separated from Corsica) was to be inherited by their Habsburg grandson,
Charles I of Spain, with the state symbol of the
Four Moors. The successors of
Charles I of Spain, in order to defend their Mediterranean territories from raids of the
Barbary pirates, fortified the Sardinian shores with a system of coastal lookout towers, allowing the gradual resettlement of some coastal areas. The Kingdom of Sardinia remained Aragonese-Spanish for about 400 years, from 1323 to 1708, assimilating a number of Spanish traditions, customs and linguistic expressions, nowadays vividly portrayed in the folklore parades of Saint Efisio in Cagliari (1 May), the Cavalcade on Sassari (last but one Sunday in May), and the Redeemer in Nuoro (28 August). To this day Catalan is still spoken in the north-western city of
Alghero (
l'Alguer). Many
famines have been reported in Sardinia. According to Stephen L. Dyson and Robert J. Rowland, "The
Jesuits of
Cagliari recorded years during the late 16th century "of such hunger and so sterile that the majority of the people could sustain life only with wild ferns and other weeds" ... During the terrible famine of 1680, some 80,000 people, out of a total population of 250,000, are said to have died, and entire villages were devastated ... "
Savoyard period In 1708, as a consequence of the
Spanish War of Succession, the rule of the
Kingdom of Sardinia passed from
King Philip V of Spain into the hands of the
Austrians, who occupied the island. The
Treaty of Utrecht granted Sardinia to the
Austrians, but in 1717, Cardinal
Giulio Alberoni, minister of
Philip V of Spain,
reoccupied Sardinia. In 1718, with the Treaty of London, Sardinia was eventually handed over to the
House of Savoy, who would start controlling it from 1720 onwards; this Alpine dynasty would go on to introduce the
Italian language on the island forty years later in 1760, thereby starting a process of
Italianization amongst the islanders. In 1793, Sardinians repelled the French
Expédition de Sardaigne during the
French Revolutionary Wars. On 23 February 1793,
Domenico Millelire, commanding the Sardinian fleet, defeated the fleets of the French Republic near the
Maddalena archipelago, of which then-lieutenant
Napoleon Bonaparte was a leader. Millelire became the first recipient of the
Gold Medal of Military Valor of the
Italian Armed Forces. In the same month, Sardinians stopped the attempted French landing on the beach of
Quartu Sant'Elena, near the Capital of
Cagliari. Because of these successes, the representatives of the nobility and clergy (
Stamenti) formulated five requests addressed to the King
Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia, but they were all met with rejection. Because of this discontent, on 28 April 1794, during an uprising in
Cagliari, two Savoyard officials were killed; that was the spark that ignited a revolt (called the "Sardinian Vespers") throughout the island, which started on 28 April 1794 (commemorated today as
sa die de sa Sardigna) with the expulsion and execution of the Piedmontese officers for a few days from the Capital
Cagliari. On 28 December 1795
Sassari insurgents demonstrating against feudalism, mainly from the region of
Logudoro, occupied the city. On 13 February 1796, in order to prevent the spread of the revolt, the viceroy Filippo Vivalda gave the Sardinian magistrate
Giovanni Maria Angioy the role of Alternos, which meant a substitute of the viceroy himself. Angioy moved from Cagliari to Sassari, and during his journey almost all the villages joined the uprising, demanding an end to feudalism and aiming to declare the island to be an independent republic, but once he was outnumbered by
loyalist forces he fled to Paris and sought support for a French annexation of the island. In 1798, the islet near Sardinia was attacked by the
Tunisians and over 900 inhabitants were taken away as
slaves. The final Muslim attack on the island was on
Sant'Antioco on 16 October 1815, over a millennium since the first. In 1799, as a consequence of the
Napoleonic Wars in Italy, the Savoy royal family left
Turin and took refuge in Cagliari for some fifteen years. In 1847, the Sardinian parliaments (
Stamenti), in order to get the Piedmontese liberal reforms they could not afford due to their separated legal system, renounced their state autonomy and agreed to
form a union with the Italian Mainland States (
Stati di Terraferma), ending up with a single parliament, a single magistracy and a single government in Turin; this move aggravated the island's peripheral condition and most of the pro-union supporters, including its leader Giovanni Siotto Pintor, would later regret it. , 1880s In 1820, the Savoyards imposed the Enclosures Act (
Editto delle Chiudende) on the island, aimed at turning the land's traditional collective ownership, a cultural and economic cornerstone of Sardinia since the Nuragic times, to private property. This gave rise to many abuses, as the reform ended up favouring the landholders while excluding the poor Sardinian farmers and shepherds, who witnessed the abolition of the communal rights and the sale of their lands. Many local rebellions like the
Nuorese ('The Already Known' in Sardinian) riot in 1868, all repressed by the King's army, resulted in an attempt to return to the past and reaffirm the right to use the once common land. However the
common lands (called
ademprivios) were never completely abolished, and they are still present in large number to this day (500,000 hectares of common lands were counted in 1956, of which 345,000 constituted by woods).
Kingdom of Italy With the
Perfect Fusion in 1848, the confederation of states powered by the Savoyard kings of Sardinia became a unitary and constitutional state and moved to the
Italian Wars of Independence for the
Unification of Italy, that were led for thirteen years. In 1861, being Italy united by a debated war campaign, the parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia decided by law to change its name and the title of its king to
Kingdom of Italy and
King of Italy. Most Sardinian forests were cut down at this time, in order to provide the Piedmontese with raw materials, like wood, used to make railway sleepers on the mainland. The primary natural forests, praised by every traveller visiting Sardinia, would in fact be reduced to one-fifth of their original number, being little more than 100,000 hectares at the end of the century. From 1850 onward, taxes more than doubled in Sardinia, which compounded the already severe financial hardships facing the islanders, due to the Italo-French tariff war: between 1885 and 1897, the Sardinians saw their land being confiscated more than the rest of Italy combined as a result of tax evasion. During the
First World War, the Sardinian soldiers of the
Brigata Sassari distinguished themselves. It was the first and only regional military unit in Italy, since the people enrolled were only Sardinians. The brigade suffered heavy losses and earned four
Gold Medals of Military Valor. Sardinia lost more young people than any other Italian region on the front, with 138 casualties per 1000 soldiers compared to the Italian average of 100 casualties. During the
Fascist period, with the implementation of the policy of
autarky, several swamps around the island were reclaimed and agrarian communities founded. The main communities were the village of Mussolinia (now called
Arborea), populated by farmers from
Veneto and
Friuli, in the area of Oristano and
Fertilia, populated at first by settlers from the
Ferrara area, followed, after
World War II, by a notable number of
Istrian Italians and
Dalmatian Italians hailing from territories lost to
Yugoslavia, in the area adjacent the city of
Alghero, within the region of
Nurra. Also established during that time (1938) was the city of
Carbonia, which became the main centre of
coal mining activity, that attracted thousand of workers from the rest of the Island and the Italian mainland. The Sardinian writer
Grazia Deledda won the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926. during the
Second World War During the
Second World War, Sardinia was an important air and naval base and was heavily bombed by the
Allies, especially the city of Cagliari. German troops left the island on 8 September 1943, a few days after the
Armistice of Cassibile, and retired to Corsica without fighting and bloodshed, after a bilateral agreement between the general Antonio Basso (Commander of the Armed Forces of Sardinia) and the German
Karl Hans Lungerhausen, general of the
90th Panzergrenadier Division.
Post-Second World War period In 1946, by popular referendum, Italy became a republic, with Sardinia being administered since 1948 by a special statute of autonomy. By 1951,
malaria was successfully eliminated by the ERLAAS, Anti-malaric Regional Authority, and the support of the
Rockefeller Foundation, which facilitated the commencement of the Sardinian tourist boom. With the increase in
tourism, coal decreased in importance but Sardinia followed the
Italian economic miracle. port,
Costa Smeralda In the early 1960s, an
industrialisation effort was commenced, the so-called
Piani di Rinascita (rebirth plans), with the initiation of major infrastructure projects on the island. These included the construction of new dams and roads, reforestation, agricultural zones on reclaimed marshland, and large industrial complexes (primarily oil refineries and related petrochemical operations). With the creation of
petrochemical industries, thousands of ex-farmers became industrial workers. The
1973 oil crisis caused the termination of employment for thousands of workers employed in the petrochemical industries, which aggravated the emigration already present in the 1950s and 1960s. Sardinia faced the creation of
military bases on the island, like
Decimomannu Air Base and
Salto di Quirra (the biggest scientific military base in Europe) in the same decades. Even now, around 60% of all Italian and NATO military installations in Italy are on Sardinia, whose area is less than one-tenth of all the Italian territory and whose population is little more than the 2.5%; furthermore, they comprise over 35,000 hectares used for experimental weapons testing, where 80% of the military explosives in Italy are used.
Sardinian nationalism and local
protest movements became stronger in the 1970s, and a number of
bandits (
anonima sarda) started a long series of
kidnappings, which ended only in the 1990s. This also gave rise to various militant groups that blended separatist and
communist ideas, the most famous being
Barbagia Rossa and the
Sardinian Armed Movement, which perpetrated several bombings and terrorist actions between the 1970s and the 1980s. In the span of just two years (1987–1988), 224 bombing attacks were reported. 's former NATO naval base In 1983 a prominent activist of a separatist party, the
Sardinian Action Party (''Partidu Sardu – Partito Sardo d'Azione''), was elected president of the regional parliament, and in the 1980s several other movements calling for independence from Italy were born; in the 1990s some of them became political parties, even if in a rather disjointed manner. It was not until 1999 that the island's languages (
Sardinian,
Sassarese,
Gallurese,
Algherese and
Tabarchino) were recognised, even if just formally, together with
Italian. The
35th G8 summit was planned by
Prodi II Cabinet to be held in Sardinia, on the island of
La Maddalena, in July 2009; however, in April 2009, the Italian Prime Minister,
Silvio Berlusconi, decided, without convoking the Italian parliament or consulting the Sardinian governor of
his own party, to move the summit, even though the works were almost completed, to
L'Aquila, provoking heavy protests. Today Sardinia is phasing in as an
EU region, with a diversified economy focused on tourism and the tertiary sector. The economic efforts of the last twenty years have reduced the handicap of insularity, especially in the fields of
low-cost air travel and advanced
information technology. For example, the
CRS4 (Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia) developed the second European
website and 1st in Italy in 1991 and
webmail in 1995. CRS4 allowed several telecommunication companies and internet service providers based on the island to flourish, such as Videonline in 1994,
Tiscali in 1998 and
Andala Umts in 1999. == Geography ==