Guspini and its surroundings told by the chronicles: the book by Mauro Serra

A collection of episodes from the district retraces the last seventy years of crime, pink and costume news in the villages of Guspini, Arbus, Ingurtosu, Buggerru, Pabillonis, San Nicolo d'Arcidano and Terralba. To write "Stories between news and history" is the Guspinese Mauro Serra, 64, a retired teacher. The revised and updated volume has now reached its second edition, with a preface by Ottavio Olita.

A work that describes - in black and white in 164 pages - the evolution of local society as told by journalism. Stories seen as they appeared in newspapers, radio and television, described by local and national reporters, but also by fashion, cooking or health or economic journalists, and sometimes recalled and fictionalized.

Among the most famous facts, the book talks about the robbery of the bank of the Ingurtosu mine which took place on February 9, 1948 : a group of armed criminals wanted to steal the eighteen million lire destined for the wages of the workers. The young Venetian carabiniere Giulio Speranza and the head of the guards Vincenzo Caddeo were victims. In Serra's text the continuous pirate excavation in the archaeological territory of Neapolis, located in the part of the Guspinese territory near the Marceddì pond, is emphasized and denounced. The expulsion of French prostitutes who operated in Montevecchio is also told, and many other episodes of crime news.

"Telling the story of the past through 70 years of journalism - says the author - is the best formula to give symbolic continuity to generations that are very different from each other and distant in time, but united by the one and irreplaceable desire to know the past. of the territory through the passion for reading and knowledge ". The author of the preface is convinced of this: "The greatest merit of the research work carried out by Mauro Serra consists in showing, through the word-of-mouth narration, how much the economic and social condition of Guspinese has remained substantially unchanged since the second half. from the 1700s to the second half of the 1900s ”, writes Olita.

The resulting mix culminates in bringing out the struggle for the improvement and survival of the protagonists from the stories , especially from the news stories revisited and adapted from popular imagination. A world that has been transformed in the last 40 years and which, unlike the past, may seem unreal to the reader belonging to the new generations who have grown up in the most unbridled consumerism and in a condition where there are more legal guarantees, the previous ones unknown.