Gonnostramatza

The name is made of two Sardinian words: gonnos, the place or the hill, and tramatza, the tamarisk, the shrub that grew thick along the water and that was abundant here. The coat of arms repeats the same thing in figures: a river, a sprig of tamarisk and one of almond in flower, which is the crop of the place. The river is the rio Mogoro, and until 1928 a Roman bridge of five arches crossed it: in that year it was pulled down to build the embankments. In the countryside around there remain nuraghi, necropolises and dwellings of the nuragic age, and the tomb of Bingia 'e Monti; the village lies in the Marmilla, where the landscape is of low, wide hills.

In the middle ages Gonnostramatza belonged to the Giudicato of Arborea and was the chief town of the curatoria of Parte Montis. When the giudicato fell, in 1420, it entered the marquisate of Oristano, and with the final defeat of the Arborea, in 1478, it passed to the Aragonese, who put it into the Incontrada of Parte Montis as a fief of the Carroz, counts of Quirra. In 1603 it ended up in the marquisate of Quirra, first of the Centelles and then of the Osorio de la Cueva, from whom it was redeemed in 1839. In the eighteenth century the Savoy set up here a Cassa di Credito Agricolo: a bank for farmers, in a village of a few hundred souls. The feasts are those of the land: the bonfire of Saint Anthony Abbot on 17 January, the first of May with the exhibition of arts and crafts, the blessing of the vehicles and the sagra of su gattou, and on 29 June the procession that goes from San Michele to the country church of Serzela.