by Gian Mario Sias
"Two days of celebration to talk about the future".
So Antonio Di Rosa, editor of the newspaper La Nuova Sardegna, anticipates the weekend of events for the 130th anniversary of the newspaper.
There have been many initiatives since the beginning of the year, but the key event will be staged from today at 5pm in piazza d'Italia in Sassari.
The good living room of the city where La Nuova Sardegna was born and has solid roots, will host meetings, debates, events, concerts, interviews and testimonies.
Di Rosa will be the host, flanked by Anna Piras, Rai journalist, former regional editor-in-chief and now deputy director of Rai Parliament. There will be Roberto Briglia and Gianni Vallardi, president and CEO of DbInformation, which has been publishing the newspaper since 2016. The ministers of Ecological Transition, Education and Economic Development, Roberto Cingolani, Patrizio Bianchi and Giancarlo Giorgetti (the first two today, the third tomorrow), and journalists such as Bianca Berlinguer, Giovanni Floris and Lucia Annunziata, Luciano Fontana, editor of Corriere della Sera, and Carlo Bonini, deputy editor of Repubblica.
On 9 August 1891 Sassari intellectuals and politicians - including Enrico Berlinguer, the grandfather of the former PCI secretary, Pietro Satta Branca, Giuseppe Castiglia and Antonio Stara - printed the first issue of the weekly La Nuova Sardegna, which on 17 March 1892 became a newspaper. Closed in 1926 by fascism, it resumed publications in 1947. Twenty years later, the entrepreneur Nino Rovelli bought it. Since 1980 it has been part of the L'Espresso Publishing Group, which in 2016 rented it to DBInformation.
"130 years are a long time, but we will still be witnesses of relevant events for a long time - says Antonio Di Rosa - La Nuova is a democratic and liberal newspaper, it has always been, otherwise it would not have been closed by fascism for 21 years". Today "it is the leading newspaper of the North West, but it is a stimulus and a driving force throughout Sardinia", adds the director who has a precise idea of what is happening on the island. "Too many initiatives are at stake", he complains. "The Recovery Fund is the last chance, it is necessary to exploit the large amount of money arriving from the EU for infrastructure, transport, reclamation, agri-food, port system - he stresses - investments are needed that produce employment and development".
La Nuova, for its part, "will always be with those who want the good of Sardinia and do their best for this", finally assures Di Rosa. "There are those who find every quibble to do nothing - there is a dangerous party, not a minority at all, which does not want anything to be done and says that everything is fine, but we must not be afraid to bet on serious economic development plans. and social ".
Speaking of the future, our thoughts turn to young people. "We complain because the boys are leaving - concludes Di Rosa - but to allow them to return after being trained, the conditions must be created".
