This is a piece we wished we didn’t have to write. For days we thought it was just a feeling, one of those impressions that build up as you watch your own country change without quite being able to pinpoint what, exactly, no longer feels right. Then we realized we weren’t alone. On social media, many people noticed the same thing: on September 3rd, the anniversary of the founding of the Republic, few flags were hanging outside homes. Very few, in fact.
So it needs to be said, even if it hurts. For years, this newsroom has pointed to the coexistence of two phenomena that, taken together, form an explosive mix: a demographic crisis hollowing out the country from within, and the exodus of our brightest young people abroad, where they find opportunities they can’t find here. These are two separate hemorrhages that feed off each other. And the question, simple and uncomfortable, is this: how can a country that loses pieces of its youth and its collective identity every year grow ideally — let alone economically?
The reality, for those with the courage to look at it, is that the social makeup of the Republic of San Marino has changed profoundly compared to even just a generation ago. This isn’t a judgment, it’s a fact. And facts, when they pile up, eventually demand to be told. Perhaps all that’s left is to acknowledge it; reversing course, we say this with the bitterness of those who wish they were wrong, seems today an almost impossible task. What remains is the melancholy of seeing the country’s most important holiday emptied of symbols, and in too many streets, emptied of people as well. This isn’t empty rhetoric: it is the sense of the State wearing away, slowly, before our very eyes.
Many of you have written to us about this in recent hours. And it brought to mind a story that one of our readers — a Sammarinese gentleman who has owned and rented out several apartments for years — told us months ago. At the time we decided not to publish it: the newsroom was absorbed in other matters, and the story ended up in a drawer. Today, rereading the social media comments from September 3rd, we found ourselves thinking that our elderly reader had been absolutely right.
Our reader had rented an apartment in the walled city to an Italian friend. Beyond the usual formalities of a lease agreement, he had asked him for a favor, almost a family tradition: to display, on national holidays, the flag he left in every apartment he rented out. The Italian friend, happy to oblige, accepted without giving it a second thought.
A few months pass. It’s February 5th, the Feast of Saint Agatha and the Liberation of the Republic — a date Sammarinese have celebrated since 1740, when the country freed itself from the occupation of Cardinal Alberoni. The Italian friend hangs the flag, as promised, then calls his landlord, somewhat unsure: “Sorry, but did I get it wrong? Is today a holiday?” — “Yes, why?” — “Because on my street, I’m the only one who put out a flag. And as far as I know, everyone here is Sammarinese.” Our reader, on the phone, didn’t hesitate: “No, no, you did exactly the right thing. If anything, it’s our own people who have lost their sense of respect for their homeland. You have more of it than plenty of those who call themselves Sammarinese.”
There isn’t much to add to a story like this. One can only wonder how it’s possible that a guest, a friend, feels the duty to honor a tradition that too many among us have stopped feeling as their own. This certainly isn’t a phenomenon unique to San Marino. But here, in a small country, where every gesture carries weight and every absence is noticeable, disaffection with symbols is more visible than elsewhere — and perhaps more serious too, because San Marino has always been, throughout its history, a country that survived precisely because of its citizens’ attachment to their institutions, even before their walls.
We’re not the only ones saying this. It was recognized, too, by someone who knew a thing or two about states and freedom. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln, responding to the honorary citizenship the Captains Regent had bestowed upon him, wrote words to the Sammarinese that are now carved in stone at the Public Palace: “Although your dominion is small, your State is nevertheless one of the most honored in all history.” These were the words of the president of the youngest and most powerful democracy in the world, speaking of the oldest republic still in existence. Not for its size, but for the tenacity with which its citizens had kept it alive, century after century, often without armies, with nothing but the sheer force of their will to remain free. That will is the flag: not the piece of cloth, but what it represents.
We don’t want to put anyone on trial, nor do we want these words to sound like an accusation against those who come from elsewhere — quite the opposite, as the story we’ve told shows, it is often the “guests” who teach us respect for what is ours. We simply want to say one simple thing, on behalf of a newsroom made up of both Sammarinese and Italian friends, united by the same love for this country: don’t lose your customs. Don’t do it out of pride, don’t do it out of nostalgia. Do it because a country that stops recognizing itself in its own symbols will, sooner or later, stop recognizing itself in its own institutions, its own laws, its own desire to remain united.
Next year, on September 3rd, let’s try to do something simple. Let’s bring out the flag. It isn’t everything, but it’s a start.
