Roots and innovation, the birthday of "La Sicilia" with an eye to the future

There are things that age and things that mature. For example, wine, certain aged cheeses, music. Or this newspaper, which for eighty-one years today has been telling the story of Sicily as one does for a love story: with faithfulness, some arguments, a lot of passion. And the certainty that tomorrow there will still be something important to say.

It was March 15, 1945 when the first issue of "La Sicilia" was published. Italy was still wounded and torn by war, preparing to breathe in the intoxicating scent of freedom after the suffocation of fascism. This Island was also trying to get back on its feet, and someone - as reckless as they were brave - decided that this was indeed the right moment to tell. Because the written word is an act of resistance. And of hope. It was true the day before yesterday, and it is true today as we risk being drowned under the wave of liquid society.

Since then, this land has endured earthquakes, experienced economic booms, suffered crises, fought against the mafias, seen governments of all colors and misdeeds of the same hues. In parallel, this publication has changed format, graphics, and, ten months ago, even ownership. It has lost some battles and won others. But it has always maintained its identity and has never stopped being, first and foremost, the newspaper of the Sicilians. Of those born here, of those who have returned, of those who left taking with them the scent of orange blossoms and the sound of the sea.

Being a newspaper rooted in the territory is not a limitation: it is a (pre)condition for being a voice, a mirror, a support of a piece of Italy that is never trivial. La Sicilia has always been a crossroads of the world: Phoenicians, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards. Those who have lived at the intersection of so many civilizations are not afraid of confrontation. They have only learned to carry with them, wherever they go, something unrepeatable. It is the genetic and literary Sicilianity.

And so here we are, with the web having opened doors that no typographic effort could have ever imagined. Today, one of our articles can be read - soon also translated into English - in the four corners of the world. Social media have taught us that news does not wait, that dialogue with readers is continuous. The new headquarters at Villa Scammacca - where we are already working and which will soon be inaugurated - aims to be not just a welcoming space for a newsroom but a true cultural hub where people can gather: the newspaper agora, an ambition that is in our professional DNA.

These are, all put together, revolutions that do not scare us: we were expecting them, and the future has found us alive, ready. Because those who have learned to write about this island - complicated, wonderful, contradictory, unique - have already shown they can face anything. The digital is just the last sea to cross. And the seas, around here, have been crossed for millennia. Eighty-one years ago, there was the courage to start, we have the privilege to continue. And history, as we know, never ends. It is written every day, one page at a time.

Cheers to us, with you.