The Sagra del Mare (Festival of the Sea) is the folkloristic event par excellence.
It means a lot to the inhabitants of Procida, they make a personal matter out of it.
The festival, which started in the late Thirties, deals with two principal topics: the sea - that is the life and at the same time the danger of death for almost all Procidani, and the woman, the “Graziella”, which in the end simply means “lady of Procida”.
The Sagra opens with a solemn “Commemoration of the people who died at sea”; after a mass in the church, people move away from the port in a procession of boats that escort the boats with the authorities on and the boat with the crown of flowers that will be thrown into the sea.
The throwing of the crown is a very touching moment; from the various fishing-boats the sounds of sirens can be heard, which is like a salute or a grieved call for whoever is perhaps able to hear it from the bottom of the abysses.
After sporting competitions, conferences, gastronomic evenings, exhibitions and performances by famous singers, we come to the parade of the “Grazielle”, girls dressed in the ancient traditional costumes representing the beauty of Procida. Graziella is a young procidan lady, the protagonist of the homonym and autobiographic novel of the French writer Alphonse de Lamartine, written in 1849, which was one of the principal exponents of French Romanticism.