Word: pantelleria
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...problem is that barren as it looks to most people, Pantelleria is a thing of beauty to military strategists. The island is the closest point in Europe to the North African mainland-it is only 44 miles from the coast of Tunisia -and is still honeycombed with military tunnels built by Mussolini during World War II. Though the Italian army now has only a 20-man weather team on the island, there are rumors that NATO would like to use it as a radar station to keep track of Arab air forces in North Africa. The rumors are unofficially confirmed...
...casual eye, the tiny (50-sq.-mi.) Italian island of Pantelleria has little to recommend it. Halfway between Sicily and North Africa, it has no beaches, no good harbors, no scenic little coves and no vegetation to speak of. Its one town looks like a slum-clearance project, and its 8,240 people are among the poorest in Italy. Volcanic springs, more like oversized tea kettles than proper Ve-suviuses, gurgle and smolder in the interior and, from shore to barren shore, there is not a drop of water fit to drink. Water, like almost all the island...
Vulgar Crowds. Despite its manifest disadvantages, Pantelleria has developed something of a tourist trade. Because it has been so ill-favored by nature, it has a tranquillity few other islands in the Mediterranean can boast. In the past several years, wealthy Italians eager to avoid the vulgar crowds at Capri or Amalfi have discovered it. So have moviemakers. Except for the untoward events of World War II, about the only thing of note that has happened in Pantelleria in the past 2,000 years or so was the shooting of a pornographic movie, Thank You, Mrs. P., two summers...
...island's east shore. Among the most militant of the Arabs, the Libyans boggled Pantellerian minds by announcing plans to build a 2,000-bed tourist center, complete with a heliport on the island. Some suspicious souls, both at home and on the Italian mainland, are afraid that Pantelleria may be invaded by Arab tourists carrying something more dangerous than cameras. A Social Democratic member of Parliament recently demanded that the government explain why Libya had purchased "the most strategic point on the island." With a look over both shoulders, three Communist senators asked "if it is true that...