Sala

Sala

Sala is one of the highest village in the Serra. The first documented news refer to the transfer of the village to the diocesis of the Bishops of Vercelli in 1191, tranfer that continued to 1772, the year in which it passed to Biella. The 1700 and 1800 reports insist on the poverty of the land resources and Super-Intendent Blanciotti (1752) describes a picture extremely unfavourable of the rural activities of the village. Sala was “an all exposed site to the North, and cold, where the only products were small amounts of rye and horse forage, hay, chestnuts and sour wine, the inhabitants are without commerce or industry and therefore they are poor”.

The only important element reported by Blanciotti was the large number of hand looms present in Sala, in 1752 there were 112 in the Serra village against the 950 in all of the Biellese area. The hemp weaving was for many centuries the most important inhabitants extra-agricultural occupation and the most important commercial field of Sala.

 
Blanciotti noticed that there were no absenses to exercise elsewhere any kind of trade; while the women were already migrating to the rice fields in the plain, distant emigration was pratically non existing. The phenomenon only started gradually at the beginning of 1800 and from the start with construction work. From 1808 to 1813, 54 permits to travel abroad were issued and in 1819 20 bricklayers were registered as exercising the trade on the other side of the Alps. Turin and the Biellese area, where industrial development was increasing, moltiplied the opportunities for work, but it was mostly France to offer to the Salesi’s bricklayers amples possibilities.Therefore, the weaver’s work which before was almost totally for males, became an exclusive female occupation ( in the census of 1871 75% of the women in Sala declared themselves as “weavers”). The bricklayers, in the contrary, specialised in one particular construction field: they became trabucan (decorators), not a construction, but a finishing job.

At the beginning of 1900 the influence of emigration on the Salese community took a drastic change. For nine months of the year the village was empty of its entire male population: twohundred and more people took the way to Isère, Lyon and Geneva, for a season lasting from March to November. After the Great War had closed the doors to emigration, the flow abroad started again with a more decisive flow and breaking the original seasonal pattern. The many years spent abroad even in a transitory way, had allowed the emigrants to establish some sort of roots in the country of adoption, by absorbing culture and way of life.

. The biographies of the Salesis are 375, 23.4% of the inhabitants in 1911. By examination of the cards, we notice that 75.4% emigrated to France; South America follows with 9.8%, then Switzerland with 9.3%, Africa and the United States with 1.7% and the other European countries with 1.1%. The most frequent family names are Morino (Baquetto, Craveia, Ros), Baudrucco, Zacchero, Cesale and Cesale Ros, Festa, Prella, Bosa, Bessone, Rovaretto, Barbero, Raimondo, Cossavella and Faletto, Massera and  Torta. The oldest emigrant is Antonio Torta, born in 1840, bricklayer in France.