As modest in size when great in its symbolic significance, the Holy Cross insists on a corner of the square of the same name, which has always been a crossroads of gazes, dreams and concerns.
What decreed its role as a privileged corner of village identity was the tragedy that struck the village in 1892, “S’Unda Manna.”
On the night of October 20, 1892, in fact, after a day of heavy and continuous rain, around eleven-thirty at night, the town’s two rivers, Riu Mannu and Riu Flumineddu overflowed, pouring into the town all the water they had accumulated from neighboring towns.
The town, which then had a population of about 1,735, was submerged by a sea of water and mud to a height of five feet. The modest ladiri houses could not protect the inhabitants: there were 69 dead who found burial in a mass grave at the cemetery of St. John’s Church.
It was not easy for those who escaped the flood to recover: first aid did not arrive until Oct. 23 as the waters had also invaded the neighboring towns of Assemini, Decimo and Elmas. The continuous appeals of civil and religious authorities, saw a response in the generosity of the faithful and political offices who allocated many offerings to alleviate the pains of the inhabitants of San Sperate.
A special committee was set up for the reconstruction of the Holy Cross, after “as is unfortunately notorious, on the night of October 20 the waves of the cloudburst seco carried away the building that this population respectfully appended with the title of Holy Cross that stood in the center of the square of the same name.” A dedicated council meeting was convened on July 18, 1896, with an “application of the Committee for the erection of a modest memorial in Holy Cross Square” on the agenda.
The immense tragedy that struck the town still echoes loudly, four years later, in the words of the minutes of that meeting: “Now a committee composed of people of the town respectable in every way, has been formed for the purpose of building, with the help of the population a memorial on the very spot where the Holy Cross stood, a modest memorial that may achieve decency accompanied by the strictest economy. This committee, which knows that these municipal finances could not lend it pecuniary aid, is content with the stone found in the ruins of the old bridge in “Rio Mannu.”
For a community at the end of its tether, which did not want and could not give up the hope in the future that that Cross still represented, there was only one solution: to grant “to the same (committee ed.) the stone of the ruins of the old bridge in Rio Mannu owned by the municipality, which cession the municipality makes as per offer for the erection of the Remembrance in the Holy Cross Square in this populated.”
Thus, the City Council admits that “the work to which the Committee wishes to embark is eagerly awaited by the entire population,” and that unfortunately, the totally empty coffers did not allow “giving the Committee pecuniary aid” and this remained as the only alternative. A stone that “can only be of little monetary value” but of immense emotional and symbolic impact: from the ruins of an ancient (Roman?) bridge, the monument of a poor farming community was raised, which of unity of purpose has always made its strength.
