Sicily, the best in the world
To see and walk on the snow-covered Mount Etna is a privileged experience. I lived it last week as a brilliant start to a stay in Sicily accompanying a group of ARA subscribers. We toured the island following the trail ofIl Gattopardo and its author, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and we were sated with beauty and art, all still dazzled by the impact of the snow-white snow dotted with black-as-coal volcanic bombs.
Climbing, sinking our feet into the snow towards a crater that the fog was beginning to cover, amidst jokes about the film Balandrau, was a good way to break the ice with our travel companions, some of whom knew each other from a similar previous experience in Apulia. It was immediately easy to confirm that this newspaper has built a community of readers who share a lot of common interests throughout Catalonia.
During this week, everything has been abundant: sympathy, art, rain, good food. We have been dazzled by the beauty of the churches, the magnificence of the palaces, the omnipresence of religious sentiment, and the Sicilian pride for a past marked by the trace of so many cultures —Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Byzantines, Spaniards, Catalan-Aragonese— that have helped to make Sicily a unique place in the world. La migliore al mondo is perhaps the phrase we have heard the most these days.
We have traveled with our senses awake to receive all kinds of pleasures: pistachio cream, fresh fish, chocolate, giant lemons; the Greek theater of Syracuse, the late Baroque of Noto, the spectacular mosaics of the Roman villa of Casale, in Piazza Armerina, the setting for Tomasi di Lampedusa's childhood memories in Palma di Montechiaro, the Valley of the Temples of Agrigento (we arrived at night and saw them illuminated, and the coach was filled with shouts of pure joy), the Byzantine mosaics of the Norman palaces and churches of Palermo.
When we were beginning to fear that we would succumb to the famous Stendhal syndrome, the culmination arrived: a private visit to Palazzo Gangi, in Palermo, where Visconti's Il Gattopardo was filmed, magnificently preserved and full of diverse wonders: Chinese vases, Murano chandeliers, fine porcelain, impressive mosaics, paintings, furniture. We can't get enough.
It is the setting of the great story written by Lampedusa. Most travelers have read it to travel to Sicily and, when we leave the island, we have the feeling of having better understood the famous phrase from the novel that many readers recite from memory: Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi. It is said by Prince Tancredi's nephew, when the noble Salina family sees itself threatened by the winds of change brought by Garibaldi. By better knowing the island's history, it is easy to understand that adaptation has been the Sicilian way of survival.
Sicily —invaded like almost everything by tourism—, manages to maintain its exuberant and chaotic personality, insistently complaining about the north but always proud of its turbulent but enriching past. Sicilians are convinced that Saint Agatha and Saint Rosalia will be able to protect them from all the evils that may come from outside. Trump included.