Based on an accurate reconstruction of the historical, political, cultural, and intellectual debate that arose following the unification of Sardinia to the Savoy mainland states in 1848 and the consequent political-institutional repercussions that this union had on the Island, with the development of the so-called “Sardinian question”, the essay intends to reflect on the State-Region relationship starting from the birth of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia in 1949. This relationship was characterised by a latent conflict that gradually led the Sardinian’s political and intellectual elites to clash with the State authority for the affirmation of the autonomist ideal as legitimated by the Special Statute approved by the Constituent Assembly in 1948, which shortly afterwards led to the foundation of the regional authority, and to request extraordinary interventions from the national governments to resolve the ancestral economic and social problems that conditioned the Island’s growth and impeded its development.
