Rome revokes Special Economic Zone authorisation for the Tavolara Bay glamping development at Cala Finanza, two days after a municipal council U-turn and a mass protest on the beach.
Italy’s Department for the South has revoked the Special Economic Zone (ZES) authorisation granted to a luxury glamping project at Cala Finanza, near the island of Tavolara in north-eastern Sardinia. The proposed development had triggered months of local protest.
The reversal, announced on 2 July, overturns an authorisation originally granted on 6 February 2026 to Tavolara Bay Srl, an Italian-Brazilian company belonging to the Brazilian group JHSF Participações, which also controls the luxury Fasano hotel chain. The scheme would have converted Villa Joy, a historic villa on the promontory facing Tavolara, along with around twenty removable cabins, without adding new permanent floor space.
Council U-turn triggers Rome’s climbdown
The government’s move followed a vote by the municipal council of Loiri Porto San Paolo on 30 June to rescind its own November 2025 resolution. In that decision, the council had reclassified the Cala Finanza site from a protected zone to one permitting tourist development. Mayor Francesco Lai said the state authorisation had been withdrawn precisely because the council had already revoked its underlying resolution. He added that the episode showed that “when a municipality exercises its prerogatives seriously and rigorously, the state knows how to listen and knows how to correct itself.”
The council’s reversal came a day after hundreds of residents and environmental activists staged a demonstration at Cala Finanza under the banner “Cala Finanza is Everyone’s Heritage.”
Todde: “Sardinia was right”
Sardinian regional president Alessandra Todde, who had contested the original authorisation, said the region had been vindicated. “Sardinia was right,” she said. “The government tried to decide in our place but was forced to face the evidence and step back, revoking the ZES authorisation.” Todde had already lodged an appeal against the project with the regional administrative court (TAR), with a hearing scheduled for 8 July, and had indicated she was prepared to take the matter as far as the Constitutional Court.
Regional local government assessor Francesco Spanedda said the dispute had never been about opposing investment as such, but about respecting planning rules and institutional competences.
Company “deeply perplexed”
Tavolara Bay Srl said in a statement it was “deeply perplexed” by the revocation, maintaining that it had acted throughout in line with the ZES procedure, and that it was reviewing the situation with its lawyers to determine next steps to honour its long-term commitments.
The company added that, as private investors, it wished to express its concern at the uncertainty of the legislative framework.
The reversal has opened up a broader political dispute. A government spokesperson rejected criticism of the ZES procedure, arguing that the Department for the South had intervened only after local agreement existed and only once the municipality had already authorised the project. They accused the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement of using the case for propaganda rather than owning decisions taken by local administrations.
At regional level, the row split along different lines: Forza Italia credited the preservation of Cala Finanza to the mobilisation of Sardinian civil society, while figures from Fratelli d’Italia accused the regional government of trying to shift responsibility onto national government once the case had drawn wider attention.
