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Buggerru, a small village nestled on the southwestern coast of Sardinia, stands as a silent testimony to the mining epic that has crossed the lands of Iglesiente. Founded in 1864, the town grew around the Malfidano mine, once the beating heart of zinc and lead extraction, resources that made it a pillar of the Italian mining industry.

The mining activity, whose roots date back to Roman times, reached its peak in the 19th century, transforming Buggerru into a crossroads of trade and technology. The imposing Malfidano mine, operational until 1979, produced over a million tons of zinc and 200,000 tons of lead, outlining an industrial panorama without equal.

Under the management of the Societé des mines de Malfidano of Paris, the village experienced a period of splendor, so much so that it earned the nickname "petit Paris". The French leaders, who moved with their families, brought their habits and customs, creating an elite cultural microcosm, made up of theaters, cinemas and exclusive clubs. However, the prosperity of the village hid another face: that of the miners, forced to work grueling shifts, with reduced wages and a life marked by deprivation. The extreme working conditions culminated tragically in the Buggerru Massacre on September 4, 1904, when a workers' protest was forcefully repressed, leaving three miners dead and marking the beginning of the first general strike in Italy, an event that would have a profound impact on the history of workers' struggles.

The memory of this industrial and social past is today enclosed in the buildings that still dot the landscape of Buggerru, monuments of an era that lives in stone and iron.

The Henry Gallery, dug along the rugged coast, presents itself as one of the greatest examples of mining engineering, an open wound in the rock that once saw the passage of trains loaded with precious minerals that transported the minerals extracted from the Planu Sartu mine, to the washery located in the bay of Buggerru. Today, this stone colossus is an open-air museum that tells, through its tunnels, the hard life of the miners.

Next door, the Palazzina della Direzione Mineraria, restored and converted into an exhibition space, preserves the echo of the administrative decisions that were made here, a hub of control and strategy in which the fate of the riches extracted from the earth was determined.

The Miner's Museum carefully collects finds, documents and testimonies that vividly paint the daily life of the workers, the difficulties faced and the extraction techniques used, offering a journey through time, between toil and hope.

Buggerru, in addition to being a place of memory, is included in the Geominerary, Historical and Environmental Park of Sardinia, recognized by UNESCO for its inestimable value as a site of industrial archaeology. The ancient mining trails, abandoned villages and infrastructures corroded by time tell of a different Sardinia, less known, but equally fascinating. The celebrations for the Massacre, the commemorative monuments and sculptures by Pinuccio Sciola dedicated to the fallen, keep alive the legacy of that distant September of 1904, reminding those who visit these places of the struggles and sacrifices of those who, with their work, have forged not only the territory, but also the collective identity of the region. Thus, Buggerru becomes an open book on the past, an opportunity to immerse yourself in a history that is not only local, but universal, made of progress and conflicts, growth and pain.