Thread by @DrWatson_writer

**SARDINIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY: how Sardinians renounced it (and are now regaining it)**

I just had this discussion with myself and wanted to post it soon. This is not like usual threads but more like an informed personal discussion.

As I've mentioned other times, the Sardinian identity differs from the rest of Italy because of its mainly different history. The Island and the Peninsula have been in contact during all the centuries leading to the Italian unification, but Sardinia was a different country.

We were autonomous during the Middle Age, we fell into the Aragonese/Spanish influence afterwards (no, we weren't colonised) and then under Savoy rule (again, not colonised). It's exactly in these 4-5 centuries that our national identity shifted from the peninsular perspective.

Our traditional dresses and jewels have origin in this period; our language was already different since medieval times; our customs and festivals were still deeply influenced by Roman techniques. The feudal system of the Aragonese/Spanish period helped keeping things static,

-or as static as that could be, because things evolve anyway. That's why we speak of "nationality": not in the political sense but in the sense of a people with its own history, language and traditions that are different from the others.

Sardinian was the official language of-

-the medieval kingdoms, the Judicates, and it remained of great importance until the 1800s. The laws were written in Sardinian, the people spoke Sardinian. The Savoy introduced the Italian in the XVIII century, but they didn't care about the commoners, who still spoke Sardinian.

The Savoy spoke French, they didn't speak Italian. Cavour, one of the makers of the unification, didn't know Italian until later times.

What is this meant to tell? That Sardinians were still free to evolve. The Savoy officials in Sardinia had to learn Sardinian and Sardinians

-learned French, without any forcing to abandon their customs.

Sardinian was the national language, traditional dresses were national costumes. These references are taken from Piedmontese/Savoy writers like La Marmora and Despine. They recognised a Sardinian identity and -

-appreciated it too.

Sardinia was still a land of dualities: there were those who followed the traditional fashion, mostly commoners and wealth landowners, and those who wore continental (that is, French) fashion, especially in the big cities. Still people went ahead in this way

-with only an influence in the tastes of fabrics, shapes, colours, but never renouncing their costumes. People were proud of their traditions. Rich and local personalities would wear their traditional gala dresses to meet the officials of the king.

Then things started to change.

The Italian unification led to the problem of not actually having an Italian people. Politics were applied to uniform the population of the new country. Italian became the language of the high class, writers wrote in Italian, universities taught in Italian. The world wars had -

-people of different parts of the Kingdom coming in contact, leading to the first radical changes in clothes of the lower classes. The Sardinian (and southern Italy) historical background had the Island stuck into medieval technologies and the progress of the "continent" struck-

-Sardinians as the highest level of "civilisation".

That's the word, that's the key to everything. In contrast, the peninsular Italians saw Sardinians as barbarians, bandits and shepherds, stereotypes dating back to Roman era that we still face today. Vignettes were drawn-

-insisting on the "barbarian" stereotypes of Sardinian men (and these were drawn by Sardinians!).

What follows is logical consequence: Sardinians started to believe it. They thought they could guarantee a future to their children only abandoning their language and traditions.

Younger generations abandoned traditional dresses because they were "uncivil", parents taught Italian to their children because the "dialect" was uncivil. This is how Sardinian became a language minority at risk of extinction of an ethnic group within a bigger country.

Without Sardinians' consent this wouldn't have happened. This is how I don't speak Sardinian today (but I wish to learn it). In the first decades of the Republic of Italy, Sardinian was banned (🚫banned 🚫) from use in public schools in the attempt to create a uniform population.

This is not something that is spoken enough of.

Then things changed again. Someone started to realise. In the 70s, Sardinian got its language status recognised. We became a bilingual region of Italy but the equality of the languages is still not reached (and let's not talk about

-Sardinians own way to ruin everything again...).

The equality to Italians is still not reached in Sardinians' minds either. Many Sardinians still think speaking Sardinian will give a bad impression, having Sardinian accent makes you look ignorant. Sardinians are probably the-

-only ones who cover their face in shame when another Sardinian with accent speaks at the TV. Neapolitans and Romans would probably rejoice instead. I am too trying to defeat my own personal issue with my recorded voice.

In all this story there's an important part played by-

-folklorist events. It's thanks to them that traditions, dresses, dances and songs have not been completely lost, even if they also give an altered version of richness and exaggeration (surely Sardinians loved jewels but you must understand that was for festivities, not everyday-

life), or create rites that didn't exist. Create myths for the eye of the tourists, like the "spectacularisation" of marriages, with rites that were supposed to be private. Folklorist events were born to have that appeal, like the first Cavalcata Sarda, born in 1899 in occasion-

-of the royal visit to Sassari, where Sardinians (still proud of their dresses) could show off in front of the king and queen.

But I spoke of regaining, because when something happens so quickly, you can expect someone to notice what they were stripped of and trying to-

-recover it. Some people never left it, old people of the internal towns never left their dresses, but the change now comes (and must come) from the younger generations. I've seen people taking inspiration from traditional jewels, traditional textiles to create new things, young-

-people parading in traditional dresses and folk dances. I'm trying to do that in writing and I aspire to wear (and maybe get) my traditional dress too one day.

So the point is: do we need to abandon traditions for progress? Should we call it progress if it eradicates the roots?

I'll leave here two examples of how Sardinian traditions and Sardinians have been ridiculed in recent times. The poster is from 1997, the promo is of 2021. Evidently no one saw anything wrong with them.

https://twitter.com/DrWatson_writer/status/1404063628811251712?s=19

Also, since this applies here (they're just 3 tweets, it doesn't take long to read):

https://twitter.com/DrWatson_writer/status/1404430880706371587?s=19