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Mauro Morandi: "Robinson wanted to go back to society and I didn't"
Photo: private / dpa
He lived all by himself for more than three decades on an abandoned island, but now he has to get back into society: In Italy, an 82-year-old hermit is supposed to evacuate the lonely island of Budelli in the archipelago of La Maddalena in northern Sardinia.
Mauro Morandi had spent 32 years of his life there, as he told the dpa news agency.
But now he has to get away, because the house in which he lived - a holdover from the time of the Second World War - has to be rebuilt.
The National Park of the Archipelago of La Maddalena has therefore asked Morandi to leave the island - it should be the end of April.
In 1989 Morandi actually wanted to set out for the Pacific with a catamaran.
At Budelli, however, there were problems.
Morandi was so excited about the tiny island paradise with the pink sand that he decided to stay there.
Due to the lucky chance that the guardian of the island changed, Morandi was able to take over the job there.
Some call Morandi the »Robinson Crusoe of Italy«, after the novel by Daniel Defoe.
But that's not how the hermit sees himself: "Robinson wanted to go back to society and I didn't."
Over the years there have been more and more disputes with the authorities because he had expanded his house without permission.
"I'm really tired of all these things now," said Morandi, who actually comes from Modena in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna.
According to him, the island will become a research center.
The national park initially did not answer a request from the dpa.
Morandi, whose children still live in Modena, now wants to move to a small apartment on the main island of La Maddalena, as he reported - but to the periphery.
He still needs contact with nature, and he can best live alone.
ptz / dpa