Today in San Marino Week: The Outpost’s John Kennedy O’Connor is please to welcome Luis Busignani, a New York native with deep Sammarinese roots, who has split time between the USA and the enclave. What does it mean to be Sammarinese in the world?

Video above, rough machine transcript below.

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JOHN KENNEDY O’CONNOR:

Well, welcome to another San Marino Conversation, and I’m really pleased to say we’re joined by Luis Busignani. Did I get that right?

LUIS BUSIGNANI:

Yeah.

O’CONNOR:

Luis, it’s lovely to meet you. Thank you.

BUSIGNANI:

It’s like Luigi in Italian.

O’CONNOR:

Okay. Yeah. But you have a slight accent. You don’t necessarily sound like you’re from here. Have you lived in the US at all?

BUSIGNANI:

Yeah, I am a native American speaker. I am from Brooklyn, New York. Oh, wow. You know, after the Second World War, there were such huge migration fluxes to America and all the New York residents’ surroundings. So my grandparents moved to New York. From San Francisco.

O’CONNOR:

Marina?

BUSIGNANI:

Yeah, yeah, my mother’s side grandparents moved to New York and where my mother was born and my brother and me were born.

O’CONNOR:

So you were born in New York?

BUSIGNANI:

Yeah, Brooklyn.

O’CONNOR:

When did you come back to San Marino?

BUSIGNANI:

Actually, it’s such a long story, but not so long. You know, it’s like, I did huge things in New York, and I’ve been living mostly in New York and in Italy because of my job. You know, I work on acting, teaching drama English. I am an artist, illustrator. I’m working on different things and different projects. So that’s the reason why traveling and getting different bases all around the world sounds really nice.

O’CONNOR:

Okay, now what do you do here in San Marino? I believe you work in the jewelery industry.

BUSIGNANI:

Yeah, you know, after the… they say it’s finished? I don’t know, because I was living in New York once again, but I got stuck here in Europe because of the COVID, you know. That was such a hard period for us artists, and, you know, who works in entertainment and stuff like that. But we survived, and I kept on working on remote teaching and writing and cooperating with different people, and, you know. And I’ve been teaching English as a second language to Italians and kids, adults as well.

O’CONNOR:

Our audience is very interested to know because we are based around the small, very small, city of Eureka in California, and yet that’s more or less the same size as San Marino. So here you have this tiny little city which is about 26,000 people but you have San Marino, an independent nation, a very old independent nation. How does San Marino find its way in the world? How does it even exist?

BUSIGNANI:

I don’t know because I think that the real San Marino ones strongly believe in the fact of there is San Marino within the world. I think that those people fought a lot for their independence and to be considered such a nation with their own laws and regulations and everything and they protected a lot, themselves a lot from the rest of the world, you know, like conflicts and wars. And this is something coming from a really antique past, I think, that even now if you talk to natives here, they sound like really linked to their own nation, like San Marino and people from here.

O’CONNOR:

It is very much a unique identity. People don’t, for example, they don’t think of themselves ever as Italians, even though Italian is the language that they use.

BUSIGNANI:

Yeah, that’s really singular because you know as an American, all the times in New York as well, it counts billions of people, but nobody knows San Marino as a republic, honestly. As you said before, most people think about that one in California.

O’CONNOR:

There is a San Marino in California.

BUSIGNANI:

It’s really strange because it’s got the same colours on its flag, the one in California, and quite a similar icon on its flag, and I honestly don’t know the reason why it’s like that. But anyway, what I know through books, and you know, that’s like, since the very beginning, a man who was kind of a sculpture during the Christian persecutions caused by the Roman emperors, I think it was Dio Clasci, Dio Clasciano, that’s in Italian, and this man was persecuted because he was a Christian, faithful to that religion, sort of, and with a friend named Galileo, they moved to the Adriatic Sea coast, and once they split it, and Marino, this man, moved to this land, named now San Marino for this reason, and he founded one of the first small communities of people who believed in Christ, and they had different caves which they lived in.

O’CONNOR:

They lived in the caves on the mountain? Yeah.

BUSIGNANI:

Yeah, that’s true. And that was the very beginning of the Sammaritan’s history.

O’CONNOR:

And it is very proudly the oldest republic, certainly in Europe. I think many people think it may be the oldest republic in the world. Yeah. So it was always a very democratic, very… Yeah. And in fact, now you have this unusual system. You have two heads of state, I believe. Two at once. Yeah. How does that work? And with so few people, I’m curious. Surely everybody will eventually be the head of state for San Marino. Yeah.

BUSIGNANI:

Yeah, that’s true, that’s true. It’s really unique, it’s really unique, it’s really unique, you know. Because as a Sammaritan, you could get your own privileges, you know. It’s like the passport and just not citizenship naturally, but the possibility to live here with no troubles and to get a job.

O’CONNOR:

I mean, there is no crime here at all. No. I mean, I know you have a prison, in fact, it’s just across the street, but there’s only one person in there and he’s an ex-government official, I believe, for corruption. Yeah. It’s a very… That’s true. You have no military and you have… I mean, the only people I suppose would ever want to invade would be the Italians, and why would they? They’ve let you be peaceful here for two centuries. But it’s interesting because San Leo, who you mentioned, San Leo is now on another mountaintop. So you have these two mountaintop communities. So why does San Leo never become independent? It’s always been part of Italy, whereas San Marino was able to survive.

BUSIGNANI:

It’s really singular, it’s really singular because San Leo is part of Italy. It’s like in Illia Romagna, and it’s a region, it’s a small center there. They name it Comuni in Italian. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s it. Marino, that founder was really strong and proud of opening a new way to find an independence and independence.

O’CONNOR:

Well it’s worked very well. It’s a beautiful place, no crime. It’s raining like crazy outside, but normally it’s beautiful weather whenever I’ve been here before. It’s very interesting. Well, I don’t want to give anyone in Eureka any ideas about becoming an independent nation, but you never know. It’s more or less the same size, so perhaps when I go home, Eureka will be the first republic within the US. You just never know. Louis, it’s a real pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for joining us for a San Marino conversation. And thank you for joining us, and hopefully join us for another San Marino soon. We have one more conversation before I leave, and we’ll look forward to that. Bye-bye.