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Oral history recording with Domenico Casetta. Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Part 1 of 6 (AV 11367 - AV 11372).

00:00:01 The interviewer asks Domenico to say where he was born and to talk about his family. Domenico was born on the 31st of August in 1930, in a town called Montà d’Alba, in the province of Cuneo. His father was also born there and worked on the land. At the age of six, together with his mother and father, Domenico went to live in Turin where he could continue his studies and have better schooling. His parents opened a dairy shop there and then a small meat shop. However, when war broke out things didn’t go well for the shop and his father got into debt. He was forced to emigrate to Germany where he worked in a foundry until 1943. Just before the fall of Mussolini, Domenico’s father returned to Turin and then found work in a British foundry. Then, in 1946, he asked for a transfer to Swansea, but his wife could only join him in 1951. After he finished his Surveyors degree, Domenico was only able to join his parents in Wales in 1954, with a work contract with the tinplate industry. Following more studies he worked in various architect and engineering firms. In 1958 he married Lorraine and in 1959 their first child, Gina, was born. From 1979 to 2000 Domenico was Italian Vice Consul.

00:39:15 When the interviewer asks Domenico to recall his life in Italy, he explains that his parents worked the land, and had vineyards where they made wine, which was then sold in Turin. He also remembers the wintertime; as the land couldn’t be cultivated, people socialised more. They gathered in stables, because that was the warmest room in the house and often they slept on a mattress made from sweet corn leaves. He goes on to talk about fascism. He remembers clearly having a book Il Credo del Fascismo (The Fascist Creed) which was seen as ‘the bible’ for the young generation. He also remembers returning home to his father and telling him stories about Mussolini, to which his father only responded with an ironic smile, never telling him what he really thought. Domenico has vivid memories of the bombings in Turin first by French forces and then English forces.