Piana degli Albanesi
REIS: Sicilian Intangible Heritage Register
Portella delle Ginestre
Description

Portella delle Ginestre

Property included in the Register of Intangible Heritage of Sicily (REIS)

 

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Technical sheet prepared by: Region of Sicily - Department of cultural heritage and Sicilian identity - CRicd: Regional center for inventory, cataloging and documentation and Sicilian regional film library

N. Prog. 203 (but repeated at n.132) (website https://reis.cricd.it/reisicilia/details/2/207) indicated with number 132 in the lists that can be downloaded from the Region's website: https: //pti.regione. sicilia.it/portal/page/portal/PIR_PORTALE/PIR_LaStrutturaRegionale/PIR_AssBeniCulturali/PIR_BeniCulturaliAmbientali/PIR_Areetematiche/PIR_Altricontenuti/PIR_REIRegistrodelleEreditaImmateriali
Bene
Portella delle Ginestre
Book
REI - Book of celebrations
Approval date
15-09-2010
Categories
Commemoration
Town \ Province
Palermo
Destination
 
Common
Piana degli Albanesi
Local denomination
 
Chronological News
on the occasion of the first of May 1947 the bandit Salvatore Giuliano and his accomplices fired on the workers gathered to celebrate Labor Day. A helpless crowd of workers, women, children and the elderly, was targeted by the blows of Giuliano's gang: eleven people killed, including two children, plus about sixty wounded. Portella is a town in the municipality of Piana degli Albanesi, not far from Palermo. In those places people had gone to celebrate Labor Day on its original date while the Fascist regime had moved it to April 21, the anniversary of the birth of Rome. There were about two thousand workers and farmers gathered to demonstrate against landowning and celebrate the recent victory of the People's Bloc which had recently beaten the Christian Democrats in the elections of the Sicilian Regional Assembly.
 
recurrence
Annual
Data
May 1
opportunity
Memorial on the occasion of the Portella della Ginestra massacre which took place on May 1, 1947
Function
Commemorative
Inhabitants and authorities of the area but also from the rest of Sicily

Between the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, the management of landed property and the gabelle system had led to the birth of the first movements for the redistribution of land to laborers. Thus it was that the Sicilian Fasci matured between 1891 and 1893, the first step towards an agrarian reform and the abolition of the privileges of the landed aristocracy as well as the abuses exercised by the gabelloti on the peasants. The facts of Portella do not refer only to the crisis of the feudal system but also to a mythical conception of banditry (Giuliano enjoyed, despite everything, popular consent); the massacre is therefore a metaphor for change, representing a change of direction, an inversion in order, the rupture of an immobile and stagnant secular equilibrium.

 

Manali, Pietro (edited by). 1999. Portella della Ginestra 50 years later (1947-1997). Caltanissetta-Rome: S.Sciascia publisher.

Li Causi, Girolamo (Petrotta, Francesco edited by). 2007. Door of the Ginestra. The search for truth. Rome: Ediesse.

Petrotta, Francis. 2010. The massacre and misdirections. The shadow castle on Portella della Ginestra. Rome: Ediesse.

Santino, Umberto. 1997. Democracy blocked. The Portella della Ginestra massacre and the marginalization of the left. Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino.

Tranfaglia, Nicola. 2004. How the Republic was born. The mafia, the Vatican and neo-fascism in American and Italian documents. 1943-1947. Milan: Bompiani.

Make it, Francesco. 2008. Portella della Ginestra and the cold war. The hundred years of the Sicilian CGIL. Conversations with Antonio Riolo. Rome: Ediesse.

Casarrubea, Joseph. 1997. Door of the Ginestra. Micro-story of a state massacre. Milan: Franco Angeli publisher.

Go to Google Maps
Provincial Road 34, Piana degli Albanesi, PA, Sicily
Location
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