This year, on may 15th, 16th and 17th 2009, L’Altra Sicilia and the Adrano City Hall are organizing the “Festa Dell’Autonomia” which will take place in Adrano and Biancavilla (Catania) to celebrate the 63rd anniversary of the Sicilian People conquer of its own government.

The event will be sponsored and supported by the “Regional State of Sicily“, as confirmed by the President Raffaele Lombardo, whom we truly thank for his high sensitivity shown in the occasion of such an important event for the institutions of a political community which should be sovereign and that only recently, and thanks to our efforts is showing its potential.

A very special thanks goes also to the mayor Giuseppe Ferrante and to the competent branch manager Salvatore Rapisarda who made this year their city, the old Aderno’, the old settlement of the Siculi, the heart of the “Sicilianita’” which is coming back in all of us.

We have started to commemorate the importance of the feast of autonomy already in 2005 and we have done so during the time, always highlighting what it should be not only a recurrence but also a true civil solemnity, a true “feast of Sicilians”, all of them, without absurd political differences which in this occasion should be set apart: first of all we are all Sicilians and we belong to antique civilization who has never disappeared, like someone probably wanted, but a civilization which renews every year its own pride.

During the three days there will occasions to celebrate, entertain, exhibitions, open debates, as we want the feast of the autonomy to be a popular feast which finally closes to the cold celebrations inside theatres. So far the Sicilian people have been imprisoned by its own institutions and its “country”: it is now time to set it free, morally, economically, and politically, to leave a different Sicily to our kids and which belongs to everyone again.

The celebrations take place in a very delicate institutional period. Finally one talks about the implementation of the Statute and how this can convert a mass of subordinates into true citizens.

In this and for this, the support of its own semi independent Government of Sicily will give even more importance to a feast which had never had a similar relevance before, probably for the jealousy or the debates of previous governments which we now want to forget as it is time to build the Sicily of the future.

W il Vespro! W la Sicilia!

ANTUDO

Trad. from italian by Massimiliano Di Domenico