The construction of Sicilian Cultural Identity, reflecting on the historical and political characteristics of the Mediterranean

, I would like to address the issue of the so-called centrality of Sicily in the Mediterranean. Now, it is quite clear that this definition also applies to other realities, either by geographical coordinates, or by historical and cultural coordinates. However, in the political and intellectual imagination this definition applied to Sicily has met with tremendous success. It derives from factors that I will summarize in a synthetic form: geographical reasons and colonial historical reasons. These two reasons, in fact, can be solid foundations for this record. The equidistance between east, west, north and south seems a convincing argument. Similarly, Greek and Phoenician colonization and Arab and Spanish occupation seem excellent arguments for conferring the status of a center of the Mediterranean.