I have never flown the San Marino flag. I probably never even owned one. And yet I have always felt a citizen to the core. I’m the type who gets emotional hearing the national anthem, who feels at home the moment she crosses the Dogana border, even though she lives in Borgo. The type who pays her respects to the Captains Regent when she meets them and who won’t let others criticise her homeland. Sammarinese to the bone, on both my parents’ side, just as my maternal and paternal grandparents were. An ontological citizen, in other words, raised by a father who used to ask about the nationality of every boyfriend, because back then women who married a foreigner would lose their citizenship.
I don’t fly the flag, but I always put my face on the line. Because it must be said, without any nationalist rhetoric, that Sammarinese citizens are fewer and fewer, and that residency and citizenship have become bargaining chips. Business is business, but we don’t know how to do business. Provincial to the core, we place at the head of this country’s fundamental assets just about anyone, as long as they’re not Sammarinese. We pay through the nose for bank directors, healthcare managers, company executives: all figures who see us as a cash cow to be milked and who, often, we then dismiss — but only once we’re certain they’ll have scorched our good name abroad on their way out.
Politics is allergic to its own citizens: just consider that there are no honours reserved for Sammarinese citizens, the very ones we hand out to all and sundry in exchange for a friendly nod. So it’s not unusual to read on social media future citizens — I mean those who have accrued the required years of residency (how, nobody really knows, since there would be much to say about the checks involved) — asking themselves whether it’s WORTH taking citizenship. What do I get out of it? they write.
And what does politics do? It organises yet another debate on the European Union, perhaps the topic Sammarinese citizens care least about, and then wonders why public discussions are so poorly attended. Is it an issue that concerns us all? Certainly. Does it excite us? No, especially after watching the Bulgarians block an agreement that was close to being signed, only unblocking it once they got their money back.
Perhaps someone should simply explain that we are not becoming a member state, and that if they change their minds — perhaps realising our administration isn’t equipped to handle such a major commitment — we can say goodbye at any moment. A bit of sobriety always helps. A bit of self-respect too.
Sonia Tura
Journalist, former chief editor of San Marino RTV and former chair of the Authority for Information
