“Every year, while I discover that February / Is sensitive and, for shyness, turbid, / With small blowing, yellow invades / The mimosa.”
Giuseppe Ungaretti
28th of February 1909: first National Women’s Day in the United States, on request of the American Socialist Party, in memory of the strike of thousands new Yorker women shirt makers that in 1908 lay claim to better work conditions. The next year, the recurring event arrives as well in the Old Continent during the International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenaghen, where they establish the International Women’s Day in order to promote the women rights and to contribute to the campaign in favor of the universal suffrage.
Until 1921, every Country has a different day for the celebration. In occasion of the Second Conference of Communist Women in Moscow, it is proposed and approved a unique date: the 8th of March, remembering the demonstration against the tsarism of Saint Petersburg women in 1917. However, this day takes an importance too much linked to a specific political moment and the motivations are in a short while replaced by events more symbolic, as the blaze of the fabric of shirts in New York where in the beginning of the XX century lose their lives 134 women, as explained by Tilde Capomazza and Marisa Ombra in the book 8 March.
In 1946 the U.D.I. (Union Italian Women) look for a flower to celebrate the first Women’s Day of the postwar. The choice of the mimosa is pretty much obligated as the blowing is in march and it has a low cost. The mimosa is a plant imported from the Tasmania, scented and elegant; it may arrive until 30 meters of high in a tempered weather. Anemones and carnations are the other flowers competing, but mimosa wins also for its characteristics: a delicate aspect, but charged in power and vitality, a flower which grows on strong lands, even with its apparently fragility. A perfect evocation of the hidden energy of femininity: the ideal flower, then, to represent the woman image!
Mimosa is also a kind of cake that the White Gloves restaurant of the AbanoRitz Hotel bring to the table every week for our guests. Created by Adelmo Renzi in Rieti in the 50s, this dessert is presented in the first 60s to a patisserie challenge in Sanremo with the intent to honor that one known as the city of flowers. Sponge-cake, cream and a liquor touch: the cake par excellence of the Women’s Day.
And what about the Mimosa aperitif? A generous dose of Prosecco with a little bit of orange juice to give the same bright color of this magnificent plant.
Nowadays, the 8th of March serves in remembering the social, economic and politic conquests, as well than the discriminations and violence women were and are subjected too. Let’s celebrate the woman, always and however, with different and various offers at the AbanoRitz. And then, every excuse is good to celebrate… and we are open all the yearlong!
