Insularity as self-determination, in a Sardinia where even "traditions are reduced to a spectacle," says Maria Antonietta Mongiu. The antiquarian. A long-time intellectual and scholar. A Commander a year ago by decision of Sergio Mattarella. And before that, in 2017, an Officer of Merit for scientific and cultural reasons. "We are in the phase of self-colonization," is one of the steps in the reasoning that sees geography as an opportunity. From today for tomorrow. The perspective is reversed. Insularity is no longer just the cause of slow development, but above all becomes the solution. The path to salvation. Even with respect to that decay of time marked outside Sardinia. By the OECD Pisa, specifically. It is the international survey that measures the skills of fifteen-year-old students. "Our island is last in Europe." In the middle of the Mediterranean, with Cagliari as its capital, "educational communities are in crisis. This means the family, society, parishes." To the professor, the declining social indicators and sociocultural drifts had long been clear. And so had the alternative. "The corrective measures lie in building a vision for the future." Giulia Maria Crespi, philanthropist and founder of the FAI, not coincidentally assigned Mongiu the presidency of the regional branch of the Italian Environment Fund. Her most precious asset. And eight years ago, Roberto Frongia, lawyer and leader of the Reformers, did not behave differently, suggesting that she lead the Scientific Committee for Insularity as part of her CV. Redemption. A battle that became a constitutional principle in 2022, even though Frongia, one of the ideologues of the political journey, did not live to see the finish line: he died nineteen months earlier.
Professor, eight years as president is quite an anniversary. If you look back, what do you see?
We came together to engage in dialogue with public opinion. Academic and otherwise. We changed the Constitution. This happened because, like few other times, informed public opinion led institutional policymakers to finally recognize what Article 3 of the Constitution already stated. That is, no citizen can be discriminated against based on their place of birth, nor on their gender or religious affiliation. In reality, for seventy years, Sardinian politics, even the most authoritative and illustrious, had not delved deeply enough into that article. The essential issue is that we did not have and do not have the same equal opportunities as other Italians. And as happens and happened with women, if things are not named and made explicit, they do not exist. Insularity had never been mentioned, nor discussed in its material and symbolic implications. Regarding insularity, the winning card was the construction of a popular leadership, which materialized in the amendment of Article 119 of the Constitution.
The Scientific Committee was entrusted with the implementation of the project; the Political Committee was responsible for institutional negotiations and the task of securing the resources to compensate for its insularity. This latter mission was not accomplished.
The real issue isn't money. Even though it's a necessary tool, it's empowerment. The real issue is empowerment, that is, the awareness by current decision-makers in parliaments, both in Sardinia and Rome, of the significance of that journey and the value of the word insularity. A journey that has led to a paradigm shift: geographical location as a positive, not a negative, factor. Not only because ancient civilizations, of which Sardinia was a protagonist, arose on islands, but being in the middle of the sea is in itself a landscape resource for humanity. However, if there's no awareness of the profound meaning of insularity, money is useless. If there's no vision for the future, and therefore no rationale for investment, why should we ask for resources? Perhaps to become even more self-colonized than we already are? If the land isn't protected from renewables, what's the point of financial availability? The problem, if you look closely, isn't economic but one of self-determination. The great Giovanni Lilliu used to say to stay away from a Region that reduces its function to that of an ATM."
In this way, however, there is a risk that politics will absolve itself.
It's true that the decline in participation is a sign of disaffection towards those in government. A loss of trust. Politics, however, never fails alone. It does so alongside the ruling class, which includes all decision-makers. Let no one think they are exempt from this responsibility. Crises and setbacks demonstrate our level of incompetence. There are sectors in which Sardinia has profoundly regressed. Consider healthcare, internal and external mobility, and education. In addition to the OECD PISA results on skills, there are the INVALSI results on knowledge: in Sardinia, there is a difficulty in structuring training programs, a failure that results in school dropouts. This also exists in the world of sports. The educational emergency is evident in unmanaged nights, a phenomenon we see in our urban centers. The inauguration of the Brotzu in 1982 suggested a completely different development. Suddenly, thanks to the large hospital, Sardinians stopped traveling to London for heart treatment, for example. For some time now, however, health-related emigration has increased again, even for very trivial reasons."
Before all is lost, how do we build self-determination?
Nothing is ever lost, because in history a world ends. Not the world. We live in the presumption of the eternal present, but this is not the case. The most militant intellectuals, from Salvatore Settis to Luciano Canfora, teach us this. One of the absences of the future, to quote a beautiful essay by Giorgio Agamben, is using the ancient world as an escape from reality, rather than a place to test oneself. A place to build the maintenance of memory, which requires varied skills, increasingly rare in our universities.
Is there a zero point on the path to self-awareness?
One of the elements of insularity is land management. There is nothing more insular than the materiality of places. Sardinia is a perfect crossroads of nature and culture. And we must start from there. When the Salva Coste decree in 2004 initiated the PPR process, approved a year later, what the Urbani Code prophesied was achieved: the defense of the cultural values expressed by the landscape. Today we need to take a further leap: extend the PPR to the whole of Sardinia. The material is ready. The Universities of Cagliari and Sassari, commissioned by the Region two legislatures ago, have already worked on the mapping and cartography. We have proposed this process again to the current majority, which has called us to appear before the Fourth (Urban Planning) and Fifth (Productive Activities) Commissions of the Regional Council.
What was the goal?
Participate in the legislative process to save Sardinia from energy speculation. Instead, it has been overhauled with various provisions (first the moratorium, then the law on suitable areas, both challenged by the government before the Constitutional Court). The proposal from the Scientific Committee for Insularity, with the extension of the PPR to the entire island, would place the entire territory under the constitutional umbrella. If this is not done, Sardinia will continue to be ravaged by wind turbines and solar panels, installed without even receiving anything in return. Neither money nor energy, but simply the destruction of the only real economy we have: agro-pastoral.
On the topic of renewables, the disconnect between the Regional Council and real society is, let's say, stark.
Sardinians have a genetic connection with their land, but this doesn't seem to be perceived by politicians. Our shepherds and farmers have always been custodians of a heritage that, once lost, cannot be rebuilt. A genocide is taking place in Sardinia, a word that brings together land and people. After all, there is no place without people, and there are no citizens without a space to live. I believe that representatives, both in the Council and in Parliament, must protect the landscape without hesitation. So far, the Region hasn't achieved a good synthesis, and Pratobello is also in the running.
Have you already received feedback on your complaints from the island's public prosecutor's offices?
We have called for the intervention of the Public Prosecutor's Office to prevent the presence of money or money laundering from becoming mere gossip. We must prevent mafia infiltration, under various titles and representations. Article 41-bis negatively colonizes the territory. Sardinia is the region with a special statute with the fewest implementing regulations: the Regional Council requests them and Parliament approves them. So far, the autonomist wind has produced an almost annoying rhetoric. Insularity doesn't mean asking for handouts from the State, but rather having a realistic picture of what is happening. That is, building a future perspective that stops the flight of our young people, the desertification of our territories, the reification of our cultural heritage and our traditions. From insularity, we must gain an awareness of where we are and the opportunities we have, so that we can then act accordingly. Insularity is the most complex synthesis of our destiny.