The Ignazio Buttitta Foundation (Palermo), the Association for the Preservation of Popular Traditions - Antonio Pasqualino International Museum of Puppetry (Palermo) and the International Centre for Research and Studies on Carnival Masks and Satire (Putignano) organised the Convegno Internazionalle “Mascheramenti animaleschi nelle tradizioni satiriche e carnevalesche europee” in Palermo on 8 and 9 February 2024, at the Antonio Pasqualino International Museum of Puppetry. The conference was dedicated to the memory of the master anthropologist Luigi Lombardi Satriani.
Our coordinator, Professor Pilar Panero from the University of Valladolid, who had already participated in the two previous editions, presented the paper “Los animales en las mascaradas zamoranas”, because in the province of Zamora (Spain) there are more than twenty hiemal masquerades, some of them recently recovered. Professor Ferdinando F. Mirizzi Università degli Studi della Basilicata also participated in the congress with the conference “Mascheramenti zoomorfi ed evocazione di pratiche e tradizioni agropastorali nelle rappresentazioni carnevalesche contemporanee” on the changes that the ancient rites of Lucania have undergone.
We thank Ignazio Buttitta (Università degli Studi di Palermo; Fondazione Buttitta), Rosario Perricone (Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo; Museo internazionale delle marionette Antonio Pasqualino) and Piero Totaro, Pietro Sisto and Giuseppe Genco (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro; Centro internazionale di ricerca e studi su Carnevale Maschera e Satira, CMS) for the invitation to participate in this space with these institutions from Sicily and Puglia. With this meeting and the six previous ones, they have done a great job in the study and enhancement of an intangible heritage of extraordinary historical and cultural value such as the carnival.
