L’AUTOGOVERNO HA ANCORA UN VALORE DA RIVENDICARE? NOTE A MARGINE DEL VOLUME AUTOGOVERNO E AUTONOMIA. BASCHI E SICILIANI A CONFRONTO

(IS SELF-GOVERNMENT STILL CONSIDERED WORTHWHILE? NOTES ABOUT THE VOLUME AUTOGOVERNO E AUTONOMIA. BASCHI E SICILIANI A CONFRONTO.) Keywords: Autonomy, self-government, Basque Country, Sicily, European Union Comparing Basque and Sicilian autonomies, the Authors of this book show us that the trend to decentralization of State structures in Italy and Spain produced two special forms of self-government and autonomy. Aiming to accommodate the strong political aspiration of their historical smaller nations, Spain in its 1978 Constitution, recognized the “right to autonomy of the nationalities and regions which make up the Spanish state” (Art. 2). Hence, this prevented the country to glide into an escalation of secessionist conflicts, in particular with the Basque Country. Italy, by its Constitution of 1948, due to historical reasons established five autonomous regions to accommodate the national minorities and the strong Sicilian regionalist movement. The recent volume Autogoverno e autonomia. Baschi e siciliani a confronto, following the workshop “Autogoverno e autonomia nella rappresentazione politica degli Stati europei”, organized by the Political Science Department of the University of Palermo with the University of Pais Vasco, cohordinated by Gaetano Armao, Marcello Saija, Joseba Agirreazkuenaga and Esteban Anchustegui, through a series of essays, examines if autonomy is safeguarding both aims: the preservation of the integrity of a State and its sovereign territory and selfgovernment for its specific region.