The background – I met Paolo Pili around 1948. I was then a young student attending the “De Castro” high school in Oristano. To go to school by bicycle from Cabras – my hometown – I would pass every morning in front of a small villa with a large garden near the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Rimedio. There, I always noticed a very distinguished gentleman who was tending his roses with evident love. I greeted him from afar; until, one day, he asked me to stop to find out who I was, probably because he was intrigued by my then strongly Tuscan accent (I was born in Livorno to Sardinian parents, and I came to Sardinia after the war, in 1946).
Sardinianism – During the school year, I made several brief stops at Paolo Pili’s, and that’s how I slowly came to know his sad story and the troubled history of the Sardinian Action Party, which I knew nothing about before.
Thanks to these strange encounters, over time and with maturity I have become a convinced free Sardist, appreciating the cultural ideals of Sardism: the recognition of a peculiar Sardinian identity, the awareness of a national unity despite regional fragmentation, a yearning for social distinction from the rest of the Italian nation. Recently, to these specificities, following my philosophy called “Doctrine of Statehood”, is added the conviction – increasingly clear – of the historical role that the Kingdom of Sardinia had in the formation of the State of which we are all citizens.
The Sardinian Action Party – As is known, the political version of Sardism is the Sardinian Action Party, which has a history of more than a century. It was born in Oristano on April 17, 1921. Its charismatic leader was Emilio Lussu. The veterans of the Great War, the men of combat, flowed into it, despite their differences in class, culture and interests: shepherds, farmers, landowners, employees and managers. It was, at the beginning, anti-fascist; but, under the pressure of General Esclepia Gandolfo, sent by Benito Mussolini to the island as prefect, on March 4, 1923 a good part of the Psd'Az, led by Paolo Pili, merged with the National Fascist Party to form the so-called Sardofascismo. Emilio Lussu and Luigi Battista Puggioni remained outside.
