There's the magic of first times. Like when you land on an island, and the first footprint is yours. This time, the island is the Sicily. West Coast, Trapani. Where this year, for the first time, Pride will take place. “If I close my eyes and think of July 26th, I can already imagine my city crowded. Full of flags and colors, a symbol of openness and respect for every person. Pure emotion!” These are the words of Piero Barbara, one of the activists who embarked on this journey. “After several years spent away from my city,” he tells me, “for me it is a dream knowing that pride is being organized for the first time.".

Sicily is no stranger to pride, on the contrary. Last year it was the region with more processions. In Sicily, Pride is an ancient history. Already in 2000, when the then Open Mind – an independent LGBT+ association – gave shape, for the first time, to the parade in Catania. This year it's Trapani's turn. This city's first time. "I had never been involved in activism before joining Arcigay Trapani”" are the words of Domenico Errera, member of the Trapani Pride committee. "I was delighted when they invited me to be part of this adventure; it was a duty I felt in my conscience." An adventure built on relationships, first and foremost. "I met fantastic people, beautiful bonds were created, and above all, we became a point of reference for all those people who still fight today to simply be themselves. July 26th will be a moment unforgettable, I can't hold back the emotion when I think about it.".

A story that already hints at the future, but has intimate, distant roots. It's rooted in an awareness that, from private, becomes political. And translates into one's being in the world. It's the story of Viviana Giubilo, president of Shorùq, the association that is carrying out the Pride project: “It's never too late. If I had to sum up my life in one sentence, this would be the most fitting.” Forty-nine years old, with a gentle gaze framed by aviator glasses, Viviana has often thought she'd missed an appointment. Only to be proven wrong by the unexpected. “I kept telling myself it was too late. For a new job, for a new city, for new loves, for my 'first' coming and an association to create…‘ Then life simply happens. ’Trapani is the epitome of 'it's never too late.' This Pride allows me to be myself, to overcome that loneliness that has accompanied me for too long, to do it in this city where everything seems so far away and unachievable…but with strength and sharing with others it becomes possible.”.

Viviana isn't the only one to have moved cities and found herself in a place that's far from everything only if you look at it on a map. Because every place is home, to the extent you experience it. "I'm originally from Augusta – he confesses to me Daniela Petracca, also from the Shorùq team – then six years ago I moved here for work. I was returning from London, after almost twenty years. I had almost forgotten how precious and fragile the fight for rights, even those who seem untouchable to us. But today, with pain, I see them called into question." A great leap into the unknown, from the metropolis to the small provincial reality. But it is our choices that give meaning to the time we are called to live in the present. "Returning to Italy, here in Trapani, was not a simple change of city. It was a return that awakened something profound in me: the awareness of not being a simple spectator. I felt the need to write a new page, to make my voice heard.".

This is how Shorùq was born. Five years ago, with the first nucleus of Arcigay Trapani, then still a subgroup of the Palermo committee. Then, on the west coast, they began to fly with their own wings. With the desire, they tell me almost in chorus, to shed light on those who often remain invisible, to build a beacon capable of illuminating the local LGBTQIA+ community, to transform fear into pride and isolation in belonging.

“"Bringing light to the streets, kindling hope in the still-dark corners of this province," Daniela says again, and you sense a different vibration in those words. Like something about to break, only to be solidified again: "Offering those who come after us what was denied to me when I was their age." Which, as I said above, is the magic of first times. A first time filled with the future.