Sicily’s Annexation and Italy’s Unification

The unification of Italy reaches Donnafugata as both a public vote and a damaged act of political consent. The plebiscite is announced as unanimous, but Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, eventually learns that Don Ciccio Tumeo voted against annexation and that his vote was removed from the count. The new state is born in the town, yet the official result conceals the very disagreement that might have made its authorization more credible.

Background and political hesitation

By the time of the vote, Garibaldi had landed at Marsala six months earlier, and political change had advanced without the old governing class being consulted. In conversation with Cavaliere Aimone Chevalley di Monterzuolo, Don Fabrizio distinguishes between supporting the unity of the state and actively helping to carry its new policies forward. He says he does not wish to create an appearance of national disunity before foreign observers, but resists being enlisted in changes already set in motion without his participation.

His reserve is also rooted in his view of Sicily’s past. He describes the island as shaped over centuries by successive rulers and civilizations from outside, and as worn down by that long history. In his account, this inheritance has made Sicilians suspicious of action itself: even reforms offered as benefits may be met with resistance. The vote therefore arrives within a conflict between the national promise of a new political order and Don Fabrizio’s expectation that Sicily will remain difficult to awaken or transform.

Before the plebiscite, many inhabitants sought Don Fabrizio’s advice. He sincerely urged them to vote yes, believing that the new political reality had to be accepted, whether as historical necessity or as a practical safeguard for people whose opposition might bring them trouble. Yet he suspected that his words were being interpreted in opposite ways. Some visitors took his advice as irony and thought he meant the reverse; others regarded him as a turncoat or fool and preferred the familiar former regime. From the people who consulted him, he anticipated about fifteen negative votes; allowing for other electors who had never visited the palace, he estimated that the town might produce around forty.

The vote and its public staging

On the day of the plebiscite, the weather is windy and grey. Groups of young men move through Donnafugata with slips marked yes tucked into their hats, while songs and political rhetoric mingle with the silence of overworked or unemployed peasants. The Prince goes to the Town Hall at about four in the afternoon, accompanied by Father Pirrone and Don Onofrio Rotolo. He hands his affirmative vote to Don Calogero Sedàra, who receives it in his role as mayor; Father Pirrone does not vote because he has not registered as a resident. Don Onofrio votes at the Prince’s express wish.

The official setting makes the transition visible. Portraits of Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II hang behind the mayor’s desk, while red, green, and white glasses of rosolio are arranged as an emblem of the new national flag. The ceremony’s patriotic colors and symbols frame the vote as a settled national celebration, although Don Fabrizio’s own affirmative ballot is accompanied by unease about the old king and the political order being displaced.

The public announcement comes late that night. Don Calogero appears at the Town Hall balcony wearing a tricolour sash and declares that 515 people were registered to vote, 512 voted, all 512 voted yes, and none voted no. The dark square answers with applause and cheers; speeches and fireworks follow, and messages are sent to the new king and the general. The celebration is brief. By eight o’clock it is over, leaving the town in darkness as on any other night.

The erased dissent and the meaning of the result

The clean arithmetic does not fit what Don Fabrizio expected. When Don Ciccio Tumeo finally explains himself, he says that he voted no and that the officials at the Town Hall changed his choice into its opposite. He identifies the injustice not only as the loss of a political preference but as a denial that he had expressed one at all. His account resolves the Prince’s uncertainty about why the result seemed so complete: the zero in the official tally does not establish that Donnafugata had no dissenters.

Don Fabrizio concludes that many negative votes would not have altered the outcome. Their presence would instead have made the result more meaningful, while preserving the voters’ ability to express what they believed. In his understanding, the deeper consequence of the fraud is the destruction of good faith, a newborn civic quality that should have been protected if the political upheaval was to justify its costs. The episode also marks a change in the perceived language of power: the older threat of direct command seems to give way to a smoother pressure that presents a person’s will as identical to what officials say that person agreed to.

The episode thus places the national birth of Italy beside the silencing of local political choice. Don Fabrizio accepts that the old order has been battered and that the new state may be preferable to alternatives, but the official unanimity troubles him for reasons beyond his class’s political interests. The plebiscite establishes unification as a public fact in Donnafugata; the concealed no votes make its apparent consensus an unreliable measure of what the people actually chose.