Sissa Trecasali

The referendum of the sixth of October 2013 did not ask only whether to unite: it asked also what to be called. Sissa and Trecasali, two comuni of the lower Parma plain, had begun the merger with the favourable vote of their respective councils, and on the ballot the inhabitants found a slate of proposals from which to choose the name of the new body: Terre del basso Taro, Sissa e Trecasali, Trecasali e Sissa, Sissa Trecasali, Trecasali Sissa. Two options differed only in the order of the words, and one would have erased both names. Sissa Trecasali won, without a conjunction and in that order. The comune has been active since the first of January 2014; it was governed by a prefectural commissioner until the elections of the twenty-fifth of May, which were won by the former mayor of Trecasali, that is by the town that had come second in the name.

What the merger put together is a flat, scattered territory, where the houses stand in separate villages and every village has its church: there are eight of them, each with its own dedication, from Santa Maria Assunta to San Michele Arcangelo, from Santi Quirico e Giulitta to Sant'Amatore, and then San Donnino, San Lorenzo, San Giovanni Evangelista and Santi Antonio Abate e Bernardino. The only building that speaks of defence is the Rocca dei Terzi, which bears the surname of a family that counted for much here. The arms and the gonfalon of the new comune arrived at the end of that same 2014, after the name and after the mayor. At the end of 2023 foreign residents were a little under twelve per cent: in this lowland, where the work is in the fields and in the food plants, it is a share that explains itself.