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Back in the Days we were Miners by Nicola Okin Frioli
It’s the history of the mines and the working movement of Sardinia, of the union and political organizations, of the strikes in mine from 1881 to 1991, Montevecchio, Ingurtosu and Monteponi, but above all the ex-miners' last generation still living in the zone of the sulcis, western South area of Sardinia.
In the first 1980s the mines of Sardinia came under the disastrous property of the ENI which despite further fundings was not able already to improve the situation. Afterwards the management of the few opened metallifere mines passed to the S.M.I. (checked by the Sardinian area), the production continued up to the 1995, year in which also the last well of the Montevecchio mines definitively closed.
And fair, every time we talk about the Montevecchio mines, remembering who in these mines has worked, also for more than thirty years, risking every day the life in the dark, dusty, and damp tunnels. The workers to Montevecchio have been protagonists also of many union struggles, what have allowed the conquest of rights which anchors was lacking in most tunnels of all Europe. This is one of the reasons for which Montevecchio is always been to the vanguard I concern the rules of security, the aid and the previdence for the workers, and he has allowed the development of a thriving life tenor for all the inhabitants of Montevecchio and the surrounding villages. The work in the mines was nonetheless terrible and the weary work turns (who was responsible for the maintenance of the machinery could be awoke to every circumstance at any time of the night) and the insalubrious air of wells and tunnels, have caused serious damages to the health of the workers.
