‘Sicilian pride’, the history and vicissitudes of the Statute

by time news

The tour for the presentation of the book “Sicilian Pride, lights and shadows of the Sicilian Autonomy and Soul”, curated by Nuccio Carrara for Bonfirraro Editore, in bookstores these days, kicks off on Thursday 18 November from Palermo. Appointment at the headquarters of the Superintendency of the Sea (Palazzetto Mirto, 5.30 pm). Following stops in Messina (Salone delle Bandiere, 24/11) and Catania (Le Ciminiere 26/11). After the greetings of Valeria Li Vigni (Superintendent of the Sea of ​​the Sicilian Region) and Alberto Samonà (Regional Councilor for Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity), the journalist Giovanni Ciancimino, historical parliamentary chronicler of the newspaper La Sicilia, and Mimmo Cuticchio, will speak. puppeteer and exponent of the tradition of the Opera dei Pupi inserted by Unesco among the intangible heritages of Sicily. The author, Nuccio Carrara, and the publisher, Salvo Bonfirraro will be present. The journalist Elvira Terranova moderates the interventions.

The meeting – a narration between lights and shadows, from the title of the volume – will take its cue from the contributions of Ciancimino and Li Vigni, two of the twenty-six authors of “Sicilian pride”. The first, witness of the period of gestation and birth of the Statute – and a punctual reporter for over sixty years of the activities of Palazzo d’Orleans and Palazzo dei Normanni (headquarters of the Presidency and Ars, the Sicilian Regional Assembly), will speak on structural limits of the Statute which, although it “was a conquest, did not free the Region from the dependence of Roman political and bureaucratic power”. The second will underline the primacy of Sicily in the institution of the Superintendency of the Sea, the result of the intuition of the archaeologist Sebastiano Tusa, with the aim, writes the author, of “putting an end to the constant plundering of our seas by” seekers of treasures “which, in addition to depleting our immense heritage, forever erased the traces of the context of origin, depriving the mosaic of history of a fundamental sign for understanding the find”. “In the spirit of the popular nature of this volume – comments the publisher Salvo Bonfirraro – we begin this tour in the cities and centers of all of Sicily for a participatory discussion between the readers and the numerous authors of Sicilian Pride”. Free admission in compliance with anti-covid regulations.

Halfway between a short historical essay and a critical anthology, “Orgoglio Siciliano” presents itself as a choral, multifaceted and popular work. An “editorial unicum” which, with an agile and fluid writing aimed at a transversal audience, first reconstructs the stages that led to the promulgation of the Statute in May 1946 and then explores its evolution (or involution). The volume is divided into three macro-areas. The first, entrusted to the author Nuccio Carrara, is of historical imprint and, from the separatist uprisings, retraces all the stages that led to the formulation of the Sicilian Statute; the second is that of opinions, with the contributions of economists, legal experts, parliamentary chroniclers, magistrates, a high prelate and an ecclesiastical librarian and two anthropologists who intervene on the lights and shadows of Sicilian autonomy: they are Giuseppe Artino, Rita Cedrini, Massimo Costa, Giovanni Ciancimino, Piero Fagone, Francesco Failla, Giacomo Gargano, Valeria Patrizia Li Vigni Tusa, Rino Nania, Franz Riccobono and Monsignor Ignazio Zambiente. Finally, the third brings together the testimonies of intellectuals and journalists, a priest, writers, artists, an advertiser, a patron and a “visionary” pastor who tell the reasons – and the illusions – of their “Sicilian pride”.

They are: Andrea Bartoli, Roberta D’Ancona, Antonio Di Grado, Laura Distefano, Marinella Fiume, Fabrizio Fonte, Vicky Gitto, Antonella Gurrieri, Mario Incudine, Don Palmiro Prisutto, Lorenzo Reina, Ivan Scinardo. Six author images, black and white shots by Letizia Battaglia and Giuseppe Leone, document and recall some seasons of contemporary Sicily; while the “conceptual” cartoons of Siciliansays – the ironic project of the creatives Giacomo and Carol – punctuate the chapters with Sicilian idioms translated and illustrated in English: a way to bring foreigners closer to the philosophy of life of the people of Sicily. In the appendix to the volume the complete text of the Statute of the Sicilian Region in force today and the historical list of the presidents of the Region and of the Sicilian Regional Assembly. On the cover, an iconic champion of France by the illustrator Turi Distefano, evokes the chivalric epic of the Chanson des Gestes which merged into the tradition of the Opera dei Pupi, recognized by Unesco as an oral and intangible heritage of humanity.

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