Stintino has a precise founding date: August 14, 1885; the origin of the village is due to the Royal Government’s decision to establish a maritime quarantine health station and agricultural penal colony on Asinara Island. Asinara Island was at the time inhabited by families of Sardinian shepherds and fishermen, some of Ligurian origin, who were forcibly removed from the island. 45 of these families, after a series of negotiations with the government, decided to establish a new settlement in a long strip of land characterized by two deep inlets, known as ” Isthintini”, not far from the Tonnara Saline establishment, at which they found hospitality and employment while waiting for the first houses to be built. Thus was born Stintino, built according to a precise master plan that neatly divided the town into a narrow peninsula between the two arms of the sea, Porto Minori e Porto Mannu, with its small houses reminiscent at first glance of those in Cala d’Oliva on Asinara. The main economic source of the Borgo was, until the early 1970s, the Tonnara Saline, whose history of the eponymous factory and the tonnarotti (tuna fishermen) is narrated today inside the MUT-Museum of the Tonnara. Stintino is today a renowned tourist resort, known mainly for the Spiaggia de La Pelosa, which still maintains a strong seafaring identity thanks in part to the activities of the Stintino Fishermen’s Cooperative, the oldest in Italy in the fishing industry (awarded in 2019 by President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella), and the traditional Latin Sail Regatta.
