Hello friends of italiani.it. Today I have the honor to ask a few questions and to introduce Mario Sammartino, Italian ambassador to Malta.
You are the ambassador of Italy. Being an ambassador means institutionally representing the Italian state abroad. This role involves years of studies and continuous transfers. How many years have you been in your job? When did your passion for a diplomatic career start?
“I entered diplomacy in 1985, the passion was born along the way. I was very fond of the idea of being able to travel, to be able to meet new countries, new peoples and new cultures. I wanted to do it not with fleeting tourist appearances, but by living immersed in a culture different from mine. It was also born as an intellectual stimulus. At the University of Milan, at the Statale, where I graduated, very soon I realized that I had a particular predilection, a particular passion, for international law. This mix made me spring ".
During your career, you have held important roles for the Italian State: ambassador, consul and you have also been assigned to the Directorate General for Development Cooperation. In your experience, what is the most important characteristic that an ambassador must have in order to best carry out his mission?
“It is the ability to adapt to an incredible, infinite number of different situations, both from an environmental and a professional point of view. I have spent a lot of my professional life dedicating myself to development cooperation, I have a certain love for development cooperation. I also did a lot of consolation. I have twice been the holder of consular offices, in Germany and Argentina which are two realities of great migration. I have also had more purely political-diplomatic positions and I must say that every time you have to get back into the game, you also have to humbly study the challenges that come from a job that is completely different from the one you left the day before ".
The ambassador's life is full of commitments. In the little free time you have, what do you like to do, what are your hobbies?
“I really like reading, I like to walk, I would also like to practice sailing which is a sport that fascinates me, unfortunately I am denied but despite this I embark regularly. I really like hanging out with people, especially friends ".
We have said that you represent Italy abroad. When you meet our compatriots who do not live in Italy, what do they ask you? What do they want to know about Italy?
“They ask me almost everything about Italy. I had the privilege of meeting Italians living abroad belonging to the most diverse social classes, coming from different regions of Italy, set in completely different countries. Personally this has enriched me considerably and has strengthened mine exponentially pride of representing a great country, a very large people, but at the same time it made me confront with very different realities. What do I mean? I take two extremes for example. Malaysia where I lived for almost five years. A country in Southeast Asia in which Italian emigration is a very recent immigration and is mainly composed of entrepreneurs, consultants of large companies, people belonging to a relatively wealthy world. They expect from Italy support for the activities they carry out, support for the affirmation of their presence in these markets which are a bit like the new frontier of the Italian economy. On the other hand, I can recall the experience I had as Consul in two large immigration countries that I have mentioned. In Germany, the Italian presence is very numerous and expresses the whole possible range of cultural and regional origins of our country. Here, the very strong demand is that of Italian culture, understood in a broad sense. Culture as an expression of figurative art, as an expression of dance, of singing and it is often difficult to deal with this type of question. Naturally, alongside these noble requests of our compatriots there are perhaps less noble ones which, however, are much more important from the point of view of everyone's daily life, consular services, the basic services that are essential to be able to live your life in a dignified manner and with serenity far from your own borders ".
We are in Malta right now. You have been ambassador of Italy to Malta since 2017, a country that has many links withItaly, historical, cultural and partly also linguistic. In your opinion, what characteristic does the Italian people have in common with the Maltese people?
"I believe, theapproach to life, if I can express myself in this way. Italians and Maltese have a millennial path of common history. If we want to go back, the Roman province has been here for more than 800 years. Malta was part, under the Spanish crown, of that entity which included all of our southern Italy. During the period of the Knights, the Italian language, culture and art were the dominant ones. Most of the artists who left behind these splendid masterpieces that we admire today were from Italy or at least worked under the strong influence of Italian art. And again, Italian remained alive as a language, as a cultural model of reference in the Maltese educated class even during the British period. In short, Malta, among the peoples of the Mediterranean who are all close to us, is perhaps the one who most of all understood this closeness as a real continuous osmosis of values, mentality and approach. It is therefore difficult to identify a quality or even a defect that we share in common, because there are many qualities and I must say few defects, both for us Italians and for our Maltese friends ”.
For the work you do, you have had the opportunity to meet many of our compatriots around the world. With our italiani.it project, we are collecting, through the web, many testimonies of how much Italian emigrants and their descendants are so tied to their land of origin. Are there any episodes that have struck you more than others in this sense?
“There are so many, two come to mind. One is about Argentina. I was consul of Italy in Mar del Plata man, a charming town south of Buenos Aires, on the sea, where there is a huge community of Italian origin. I had arrived a few days ago and was invited to the inauguration of a statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi in the main square of Mar del Plata. Arrived in this square, together with the city authorities and the mayor, I get on the stage and I immediately realize that the square is packed with thousands and thousands of people. Below me there are people very advanced in age with the Italian flags and the banners of their associations, the Italian Sailors Association, the Partisans Association and so on. When the notes of Mameli's hymn begin, I find myself in this square where no one breathed anymore to hear the notes of Mameli's hymn and these old men who were crying like fountains. Here, it was something I will never forget. The other episode is totally different. I was as Ambassador to Gabon, a country at the end of the Gulf of Guinea, in central Africa. There I happened to meet one of our compatriots, a former teacher of mathematics and physics, who at the age of 62 or 63, had left her country in Italy with her jeep, had gone first to Greece, had taken the ferry and went to Alexandria in Egypt. Alone, a woman, no longer very young, she had traveled all of eastern Africa from north to south and was climbing westward, she had crossed Angola where a cholera epidemic had recently broken out at the time. She had come to the embassy not because she needed some kind of support, but because there were so many visas on her passport that she had run out of pages and needed another booklet. Here these are two of the many episodes, the innumerable ones that came to mind ".
Ambassador, thank you very much for your time with us
“I would just like to say a few words to thank italiani.it for this interview and address everyone who lives in Malta to urge them to come to us, to come to the embassy. The embassy is a friend of yours, we do our best to meet your needs to make the best of our services. Sometimes we may not succeed, we are few but we also know that we are dealing with a very responsible, very polite community and I would like this relationship between us to be nurtured every day ".
