The happy melancholia of Sartiglia

I had always heard about the Sartiglia of Oristano and sometimes I used to watch it carelessly on television, but I had never seen from life one of the two days in which is held every year.
Until about five years ago, a friend photographer of great sensitivity, in love with Sartiglia, invited me to experience it. Because an experience is it, a special feeling.
It was Sunday, the day dedicated to the Gremio dei Contadini (the Farmers Corporation) and was love at first sight.


Totally fascinated by so abundant beauty, the masks sometimes disturbing and mysterious, the multicolored clothing of the riders, the bright red, the white embroidered shirts adorned with bright gold, black-velvet costumes, almost one with horses from shiny coat, imposing, elegant, ready for the final sprint.
All the magic of the Sartiglia conquered me.
And today, each time it ends, I feel inside me a touch of melancholy, because I wish it would never end, and while the last acrobatic team descend at breakneck speed, cheerful, overflowing the youthfulness and freshness of the knights, I feel nostalgia.

On the way home, in my head resound the roll of drums and the trumpet blasts that announce every descent in the conquest of the star, each pair of horses and the majestic parade of the Componidori, the demigod who must not touch the ground, and all the figurants.


I still have, in my eyes, the image of the people who rejoices when a rider succeeds to hit the star, or when the riders give a show with their amazing stunts on racing horses.
From then, every year I try to take away, with my pictures, a bit of the Sartiglia, that extraordinary and surprising event, to feel less nostalgia that comes over me when everything comes back behind the scenes in a quiet and peaceful Oristano after the joy and lightness of this magnificent Carnival of joy and noble braveness.