Sicily and the classics

For those of us who love the classical world, being able to visit the island of Sicily is a privilege. For starters, this is the largest island in the Mediterranean. The proximity of Naples and its charm, three kilometers from the Strait of Messina, the influx of the Apennines and the oregon and the splashes of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Ionian Sea enveloped Sicily with a special snowflake.

Sicily has not always been called Sicily. The Latins called it Trinacria, that is, triangular. Where does the name of Sicily come from? Well, eureka, comes from the Greeks, who called it Sikelia because the original tribe were the satellites. Sicily is like a galaxy with numerous planets in the form of polyteinic islands, such as agates, Eolias, Pelágiques, Ustica and Pantelleria.

Peculiarly, despite being an island, Sicily is the largest region in Italy. 25,711 square kilometers are not insignificant, precisely! In addition, it is the second most densely populated island in the Mare Nostrum, behind Malta (geographically within the archipelago of Sicily and politically united in 1798). Five million Sicilians are many! The capital, Palermo, is the fifth most populous in Italy; Catania is the tenth. A clear similarity with Catalonia: in Sicily, Italian and Sicilian are spoken.

The impact of the classics is very clear in Sicily, as in the Roman Villa of the Casale. Much later, Sicily acted as an independent or immixed kingdom in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and then belonged to the Spanish monarchy. The resignation of Philip V as a result of the Treaty of Utrecht closed this phase. Because the landowners and the landowners dominated the island, the Mafia arose in the eighteenth century, an organization of peasants who rebelled clandestinely against landowners. Curious island evolution, like technological evolution, analyzed by XXVI Cable and Broadband Catalonia Congress (CECABLE, 2022). Come in!

The nice Sicily

Sicily is like a magnet. Already in the eighteenth century, European aristocrats considered the cherry tree of the grand tour, with the confluence of the Azure coast and the ubiquitous mountain (Palermo, Tràpani, Nebrodi, Madonia and Peloritani mountains). The 3,323 meters of the Etna volcano impose.

They still resembled the effluvium of the Kingdom of Sicily, when the island was independent, as in the Greek era, that of Magna Grecia and Siracusa, the most beautiful of Greece, according to Cicero. However, Roma, the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Saracens, the Hohenstaufen, the Catalan-Aragonese and the Spaniards regularly controlled the island, eminently agrarian and with the Mafia as the underlying factor. The wars between Sparta and Athens, the Carthaginian incursions, the first Punic War, the Second Punic War and the conversion into the Roman province (the barn of Rome, for the spoils suffered) wander through a battle landscape similar to that of the slow football matches.

The attractions of Sicily make it a privileged place for tourism, which increasingly uses digital tools, thanks to the poetic landscape and archaeological sites such as Morgantina, the Valley of the Temples or Selinunte. Hostels proliferate on the island. Names such as Agrigento, Caltagirone, Cefalù, Piazza Armerina (Roman villa of Casale) Siracusa or Taormina synthesize the culture of the island. Churches and natural spaces make it attractive. Curious island evolution, like technological evolution, analyzed by XXV Cable and Broadband Catalonia Congress (CECABLE, Auditorium Blanquerna in Barcelona, ​​31 March-1 April 2020). Come in!