Nuorese Cultural DistrictGonario Pinna (b. 11 September 1898, Nuoro–d. 19 May 1991, Nuoro) was an Italian lawyer, essayist, writer and politician.
Gonario Pinna
Description
When he was just ten years old, his father, a renowned parliamentary and criminal lawyer, was assassinated outside the Nuoro courthouse.
His formative years took a circular path, seeing him leave Sardinia for the Italian mainland and a period abroad, to then return to the island to begin his professional career.
After completing secondary school in Florence, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at La Sapienza University in Rome. After graduating in 1921, he immediately moved to Berlin to begin his specialist training at the Criminology Institute.
In 1922, he returned to Rome, where his was a contributor to La critica politica, the law journal Scuola Positiva and the weekly La Riscossa, among others.
In 1923, he began working as a lawyer in Nuoro.
Throughout his life, Pinna’s legal, political and public engagement went hand in hand.
During his term in parliament as a socialist representative, from 1958 to 1963, his memorable questioning brought the Sardinia question to the centre of national debate, highlighting the island’s perennial problems like the slow administration of justice, the organisation of the prisons, banditry and economic and social hardship.
Besides his activity as a lawyer and politician, Pinna was also a scholar interested in Sardinia’s age-old problems and passionate about Sardinian literature, the visual arts and the history of the island overall.
He was friends with many poets and artists, like the father and son Pietro and Antonio Mura.
He played an important role in the worlds of law and culture, offering timely reflections on the perception of law in rural areas and contributing to important art historical texts.
