«We are a people who have experienced contradictions but also custodians of great potential, we must celebrate ourselves without incense. Sa Die is not a day of bombastic words to compensate for the other 364 days of the year, it is not the goal but it is a commitment. To improve ourselves, to act differently. Self-determination, as we have said, walks on the shoulders of an educated people. A people aware of themselves."
Governor Alessandra Todde said this during the celebrations in the regional council for Sa Die de Sa Sardigna , which ended with the notes of the Sassari Brigade band which played songs from its repertoire.
«Sa Die – said Todde – is the opportunity to make the commitment to carry out this task with renewed, constant, convinced enthusiasm, calling every woman and man of Sardinia to participate».
According to the president, «Sa Die was more than an impromptu rebellion. For this reason its culmination is not the temporary expulsion of the Savoy ruling class. Sa Die talks to us about constituent times. Times in which a parliament comes back to life, patriotic virtue ignites souls, our communities experiment with federative pacts to free themselves from the feudal yoke, an important part of the Sardinian ruling class places the happiness and dignity of the Sardinian nation as its objective".
And therefore, «today's opportunity is rather to look at ourselves in the mirror of history and understand together whether, thanks to this history, we can do more and better for our people and our land. If we can find in it food for enormous challenges, such as those of those who have to face the multiple crises that seem to condemn Sardinia to a destiny of depopulation and plunder."
In other words, «while we celebrate, we have the opportunity to ask ourselves whether it is better to continue with a history of reclamation, in which we Sardinians ask others to take charge of our problems and their solutions, or whether it is not the case to enter in a phase of real self-determination , in which to shape a new Sardinian policy, in which to build with all the passion and intelligence possible institutions at the full service of the Sardinians and Sardinia".
«The first way to change your story – continued the governor – is to tell it differently. It's telling ourselves differently. Even at the cost of questioning those stereotypes and that proud sense of identity which behind a veil of comforting habit hides the difficulty in giving oneself high values and clear objectives. For too long we have been trapped in a narrative that is "against". A story in which others have the power to decide our lives and all we have to do is rebel to demand less oppressive treatment."
But this, he concludes, «is not our story. It is not the only one that our past has left us as a legacy. It's not the best we can tell ourselves and, above all, our sons and daughters. There is a story of self-determination yet to be written, yet to be done."