Criticism – I am sure that at the end of these interventions of mine in L'Unione Sarda regarding our major historical faults – which reach up to our days through the failure of the two so-called Regional Plans of Rebirth (1962 and 1974) – some fellow countryman will resentfully oppose me, stating that what I wrote about us Sardinians “pocos, locos y mal unidos” (few, senseless and divided) is not true, and that for pure polemic I have only highlighted the errors and never the things we have done well, the positive results. Unfortunately, in the whole broad arc of our History, nine thousand years deep, studied during all my academic activity, I have never found any action, a simple individual or collective episode done well by us Sardinians. There is none. If, on the contrary, someone, better and more informed, knows it, please let me know, and I am ready to make public amends.

The proposal – However, I would be the first to censor myself if I limited myself to highlighting our historical errors, and did not propose how to project ourselves into the future without making any more mistakes, at least in the context of culture which is the seed of intelligence. The problem is given by the relationship: Sardinia-Italy, that is, by the connection between the insular Sardinian nation and the peninsular Italian nation (in which today we are incorporated as an ethnicity).

Without going much further in time, the unequal connection was born in 1847 with the “Perfect fusion” when we renounced our state identity and merged, without substantial compensation, with the rest of the mainland of the Kingdom of Sardinia. From then on, we became a simple region, a territorial appendix of the unitary State; we became, in practice, an exotic colonial possession in the middle of the sea.

The divisive effect amplified in 1861 with the conquest and annexation of the pre-unification states by the Kingdom of Sardinia and the consequent enlargement of the state ecumene to the rest of the Peninsula. And it is still so.

To solve the gap at its roots (regional politics can only attenuate it but not solve it) there are only three ways forward: either to undertake an impossible war of independence, or to reclaim our primary role in the essence of the State of which we are all citizens (and this is possible, if we want), or to do nothing, as in fact we do, so that we will remain passive and colonized for all the centuries to come.

The historical solution – As in the time of Gigi Riva who in '69-70 made us become for the first and only time the top of the class in Italy, admired and respected by all, in the same way the "Doctrine of Statehood" – if correctly applied – would make us become the first and most important region of the State, at least in social consideration, if not also political, with understandable positive repercussions in all areas of life.

However, the primary condition for achieving this goal must be that, in addition to us adults, all the students of our schools of every order and level learn the History of Italy, political, military, artistic, literary, etc., but seen from the point of view of Sardinia and not from the Peninsula as it is now. After that, we must move on to introducing these Sardinian values into continental Italy, and hope that they are understood and received.

It's a dream of mine; but we also live on dreams.

Francis Caesar Casula

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