Siurgus Donigala

Until 1927 there were two separate municipalities here, Siurgus and Donigala. On the twenty-third of January of that year the podestà and the town clerk signed their unification, and the new municipality was given the name Littoria. The prefecture contested the choice; the appeal was won, and it was decided to keep the two old names by joining them together. The decree that makes the village Siurgus Donigala is dated the twenty-ninth of July of the same year and carries the signatures of the king, of the head of government and of the keeper of the seals. Six months, and the name was given back.

On the seventh and eighth of September the village offers its candles to Santa Maria di Montserrat. The rite is probably Byzantine in origin, a relative of the other Sardinian candle feasts — Iglesias, Sassari, Nulvi, Ploaghe — although here it is held not for the Assumption but for the Nativity of Mary. The oldest candle dates from the seventeenth century; then there are some fifty more, all in virgin wax, offered by the villagers, and three others that come from the communities of Dolianova, Nurri and Orroli, each of them the sign of a bond with Donigala. The earliest documents about the rite are the accounts of wax bought in 1768 by a local confraternity.