The events proposed by the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia at the XX^a edition of èStoria, the International History Festival held in Gorizia, have aroused much interest and have allowed ANVGD managers and researchers, together with academics and journalists, to present pages of history of the Adriatic border to professionals and an attentive public.

The theme that served as a common thread for the 2024 edition was the Dates and therefore the first initiative, coordinated by Maria Grazia Ziberna (President of ANVGD Gorizia) concerned precisely the perception on the eastern Italian border of significant dates such as 8 September 1943, 25 April 1945, 2 June 1946 and 10 February 1947. This last date, in the exhibition by Donatella Schürzel (researcher and national vice-president of ANVGD), was seen as a recurrence of the Day of Remembrance, established 20 years ago to recover pages of national history that had been removed because the foibe and the exodus were the demonstration of a defeat established by the conditions of the Peace Treaty but that the newborn Italian Republic wanted to hide behind the veil of victory in the War of Liberation. September 8: the “death of the Fatherland” evoked by Ernesto Galli della Loggia had its most tragic representation in Istria and Dalmatia, where, as the ANVGD communications manager Lorenzo Salimbeni pointed out, the collapse of the Italian state led to the first wave of massacres in the foibe by Yugoslavian communist partisans. April 25: historiography and popularization of the Liberation still have many gaps or even ignore the dynamics of Venezia Giulia, where an episode like the massacre of the Porzus mountain huts is still little known, even at a local level, as Fulvio Salimbeni experienced in his experience as a professor at the University of Udine. June 2: cultural operator Diego Redivo highlighted that at the founding moment of the Italian Republic, the people of Giulia, Fiume and Zadar were unable to participate in either the institutional referendum or the election of their representatives to the Constituent Assembly that would also have served as Parliament.

2025, on the other hand, represents a year that will mark the history of the Adriatic border, to the extent that it will see Nova Gorica representing Slovenia as the European Capital of Culture together with Gorizia, a city from which it was divided by a wall of bricks and barbed wire less imposing than that of Berlin, but equally representative of a contrast. The ANVGD has dedicated a conference to this event, the proceedings of which were published by Walters Kluwer with the title From “holy” and “cursed” to European Capital of Culture. Gorizia between borders, autonomy and cross-border cooperation were presented at èStoria, with the sponsorship of Grappa Ceschia, in a panel introduced and moderated by Davide Rossi (professor at the University of Trieste), curator of the work together with the lawyer Davide Lo Presti. The manager of the energy sector Andrea Bolla highlighted that this work not only highlights little-known pages of European history that took place in the troubled Isonzo territory, but represents an example of cooperation and overcoming hostility for a world in which closures and conflicts are reborn. This cross-border synergy was also highlighted by the RAI journalist Mauro Mazza: «Culture unites what politics divides. We must take inspiration from Gorizia and Nova Gorica to mend what history has divided». The Mayor of Gorizia, Rodolfo Ziberna, acknowledged that his fellow citizens had become accustomed to the border crossing a square, to the Yugoslav border guards ready to shoot at anyone trying to climb over the “Gorizia wall”, and to the daily confrontation with one of the youngest cities in Europe.

The mayor of the Isonzo capital and member of the National Executive of ANVGD was at the centre of another meeting dedicated to GO!2025, being interviewed by Massimo Mamoli (director of the daily newspaper Arena) and Alessandro Zangrando (responsible for the cultural pages of the Corriere del Veneto). Slovenia's independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, Ljubljana's accession to the European Union in 2004 and the gestures of conciliation and recognition of the mutual suffering endured in the century of totalitarianism and opposing nationalisms made by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and his Slovenian counterpart Borut Pahor (not coincidentally recently awarded an Honorary Degree by the University of Trieste) have paved the way for this joint candidacy. Even more so since in the meantime a European Group for Territorial Cooperation has developed in the area which is among the most virtuous in Europe: «Gorizia and Nova Gorica live in symbiosis – Ziberna highlighted – and we are working to ensure that during 2025 the border divisions are not raised again as during Covid. We have a busy agenda of shared events and in their daily lives the citizens of both sides of the current ephemeral border now move, work and spend their free time as if they were part of a single urban fabric. It is this cross-border daily life that has represented the winning card of the joint candidacy"

1953 was the year in which the Trieste question, left unresolved by the Peace Treaty of 10 February 1947, experienced its most tragic moments: The riots of '53 It is a lesson-show created by the Teatro Stabile del Friuli Venezia Giulia together with the Lega Nazionale, directed by Paolo Valerio and brought to the stage at Verdi of Gorizia in a gripping and moving way by historians Davide Rossi and Gianni Oliva together with actors Maria Grazia Plos and Giacomo Faroldi, who read touching testimonies of the days of 5-6 November 1953. Moving memories by Paolo Sardos Albertini, president of the National League, who as a boy experienced the mobilization with which the people of Trieste wanted to reaffirm their Italianness, clashing with the forces of order of the Allied Military Government who did not hesitate to shoot at the crowd causing dozens of injuries and 7 deaths.

30.000 attendees characterized the events of éStoria 2024, which is already projected to the next edition that will take place in the framework of GO!2025 and will be dedicated to the Cities and their role in history, topics that the ANVGD will decline once again from the perspective of Adriatic Italianity. [LS]

Source: National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia – 31/05/2024