Mauro Morandi, whose 32-year stay on an uninhabited Mediterranean island led him to be known as Italy’s Robinson Crusoe, died Jan. 3 in Modena, Italy. He was 85 years old.
The cause was a brain hemorrhage, said Antonio Rinaldis, who wrote a book with Morandi in 2023 about his life on the island.
Unlike Daniel Defoe’s hero, who was shipwrecked and fervently hoped to be rescued, Morandi chose his life of solitude.
He said he fell in love at first sight with Budelli, a pristine, undeveloped island off the northern tip of Sardinia. He arrived in 1989, a bit by chance, he said in interviews. He left – against his will – in 2021, writing on social media that he was tired of “fighting against those who want to send me away”.
Morandi’s singular choice to live in solitude has given rise to at least two books, at least one song, short documentaries and countless interviews. As the world shut down during the coronavirus pandemic, journalists sought Morandi’s insights on isolation.
“I read a lot and think,” he told CNN in 2020. “I think a lot of people are afraid to read because if they do, they’ll start meditating and thinking about things, and that can be dangerous. If you start seeing things in a different light and being critical, you might end up seeing what a miserable life you lead.”
Budelli, one of the main islands that make up the Maddalena Archipelago, is a corner of paradise that occupies less than two-thirds of a square mile. It is known for its pink sand beach surrounded by turquoise waters. The island has no running water, is not connected to the electricity grid and can only be reached by boat.
Mr. Morandi lived in an abandoned World War II cabin, staking canvas tarps in an open space out front. He created sculptures out of branches, cooked on a propane stove and read voraciously, purchasing books and supplies on trips to La Maddalena, the largest town on the archipelago. The visitors also brought him food and water. He used car batteries and solar energy to charge his cell phone and tablet.
It was, he said, “a simple life, full of great and small pleasures.”
“The most important thing – he added – is that I have a peaceful relationship with time”.
For years he was the designated guardian of the island, hired by the Italian-Swiss real estate company that owned it.
Its main task was to protect the island’s habitat from unruly tourists, who are only allowed certain paths, as part of an effort by Italy’s Environment Ministry to protect the rare pink sand. He told people about the wonders of the island and how fragments of coral and shells had dyed the sand pink. He collected rubbish from the beach, cleaned the island’s paths and carried out small maintenance.
Morandi initially chose to live as a hermit, he said in an interview at Genoa’s Maritime Museum, but eventually welcomed selected people as part of his mission to make them “understand why we must love nature.”
He said he didn’t miss human contact. “He didn’t like what humanity had become in the 21st century – consumerist and individualistic – especially regarding nature,” Rinaldis said. This is why Morandi was keen to protect Budelli.
When he finally got online, he used social media to showcase the island’s wild beauty.
In 2016, after a long legal battle for ownership of the island, it was sold to the State and became part of the Maddalena Archipelago National Park. Mr Morandi was asked to leave.
The park’s president, Giuseppe Bonanno, recognized Morandi’s unique position. “Morandi symbolizes a man, enchanted by the elements, who decides to dedicate his life to contemplation and stewardship,” he told reporters. But there were other issues, including whether Mr. Morandi would be able to survive a medical emergency on his own, not to mention the fact that his shack didn’t meet code.
He reacted. He campaigned against his eviction on social media. He gave interviews to the media. An online petition has collected nearly 75,000 signatures.
“We don’t want Mauro to leave the island because we think first of all that if Budelli has remained a wonder of nature it is also thanks to him”, we read in the petition. “And secondly, because we are convinced that the Park has everything to gain from its presence: Mauro has lived in Budelli for a quarter of a century, he knows every plant and every rock, every tree and every animal species, he recognizes the colors and scents as they change of the wind and the seasons.”
But after fighting the authorities for five years, Morandi gave in. He was 82 years old and no longer in good health. “Part of his resignation was related to his frailty,” Rinaldis said, “but he was also disappointed because he had been forced to leave by the authorities.”
Mr Morandi left the island permanently in March 2021 and moved to a small apartment in La Maddalena. “I will leave hoping that Budelli will be safeguarded in the future, as I have done for 32 years,” he said.
Mauro Morandi was born on 12 February 1939 in Modena. Her father, Mario Morandi, was a gymnast who won the national artistic gymnastics championship in 1936 and was later a school custodian. Mauro’s mother, Enia Camellini, worked for a tobacco company.
Mr. Morandi studied to become a physical education teacher and taught in a middle school in Modena until the 1970s, when he was able to retire early. He had three daughters during a marriage that ended in divorce.
He is survived by a brother, Renzo, and six grandchildren.
In a 2016 interview with the Turin newspaper La Stampa, Morandi said that after reading Richard Bach’s 1970 best-seller, “The Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” he “took flight,” discovering the sea. In 1989, he said, he decided he was “tired of society and was looking for a different life.” He bought a catamaran with some friends, with the idea of sailing to Polynesia.
To raise money, they scouted locations for charter cruises and came across Budelli. There they met Budelli’s caretaker, who had recently decided to leave. He offered them his job and Morandi accepted it. At first he was paid, but he stayed even after he no longer received his salary; then he lived on his teacher’s pension. On rare occasions he returned to Modena for short holidays to visit his family.
At one point he read a study from the University of Sassari that showed that Budelli’s flora and fauna were similar to those of the Polynesian islands he once hoped to reach. “It was almost as if Budelli wanted me, made sure I got here, to the only beach in the whole Mediterranean Sea, which is almost similar in composition to the islands where I wanted to go,” he said in a 2016 interview with photographer Claudio Muzzetto.
After Morandi’s death, Margherita Guerra, one of his thousands of followers on social media, wrote: “Have a good trip. Finally no one will ever be able to send you away from your beloved island.”