Mayor

Domenico Cotta was born in Carpasio on 23 February 1866 from Angelo and Eugenia Giauni, originally from Triora.
After completing his secondary school studies in Oneglia, he enrolled at the University of Genoa, where he graduated in Medicine and Surgery on 27 July 1892.
In 1895 she began to practice medicine in the conduct of Baiardo and became popular with the population.

Eleven years later, he moved to Sanremo, where he also stood out for his great professionalism and his simple, good-natured and honest personality, so much so that he earned the affectionate nickname "doctor of the poor" from the inhabitants of Pigna.
It was precisely these qualities of great righteousness that brought him to the Town Council in the local elections of 1915 among the ranks of the Socialist Party, of which Cotta had become the most representative exponent of the town.
In the following local elections on 24 October 1920, the list he headed obtained a majority with 18 out of 30 seats, compared to the 12 obtained by the rival list that belonged to the Democratic Association.

Cotta, who had the highest number of preferences, was elected mayor at the town council meeting of 5 November 1920.
He inherited from his predecessors a particularly difficult situation, characterised above all by the serious debts of the municipal finances, which required urgent readjustment together with the relaunch of tourist activities. During the period of his administration, Cotta tackled some of the city's most important problems, including, for example, the much-discussed move of the railway upstream.
He also promoted a number of important initiatives in the tourism sector with the aim of relaunching Sanremo as an international climate centre, an operation that seemed possible only by restoring local finances and creating the necessary infrastructure to accommodate the numerous tourist clients.

In this context, the activity of the Municipal Casino and the tolerance of the related games of chance took on fundamental importance, so the Council chaired by Cotta, during a meeting held on 19 December 1920, invited the government to provide with a legal provision for the regulation of games of chance, anticipating in the meantime to the Municipality of Sanremo the tolerance of games in its Casino for the next winter season. With this request Cotta thus interpreted the feelings of most of the people of Sanremo, who for years had seen the development of games at the Casino as an essential tool for the rapid increase in the economic and social conditions of the city.

Another important measure adopted by the Cotta Council in the tourism field was the adoption of the new Regulations for the application of the Tourist Tax approved on 2 January 1921. The Regulation introduced a sojourn tax, modified according to the provisions issued by the Ministry of the Interior and communicated by the Sub-Prefecture on 24 December 1920, the application of which depended on the length of the tourists' stay in the city and was carried out according to the economic conditions of the taxpayers to be obtained from the type of accommodation in which they were staying; the taxpayers were then divided into two classes, divided according to the category of hotel or pension in which the tourists decided to stay, of which the first entailed a tax of 30 lire and the second 20 lire, with a reduction of half the amount for servants and children.

The Giunta Cotta also dealt with the question of transferring the railway line upstream in order to give space to the urban development of the city. In order to solve this problem, on which the city's political class had been discussing for years, the Administration he chaired appointed a technical and legal commission to study the various projects, which were then approved by the City Council and sent to the Railway Administration.

On 13 January 1921 the Council ratified the project, already prepared by Commendator Gerra, to build two separate stations, which were to be connected by a single tunnel, one to the east, near the Villa del Sole, and the other to the west near the Cemetery of the Mouth, 4 kilometres away from each other. About 500 metres; according to this project, the east station would have been located at the mouth of the provincial road Sanremo-Poggio-Ceriana-Baiardo and near San Martino and Verezzo, while the west station would have been built at the mouth of the Sanremo-Coldirodi mule track near building areas and in the centre of the Berigo area, where the city's major hotels and villas were already located.

The Cotta Administration also took care of finding an area for the new urban cemetery; the Royal Commissioner Moro, who had preceded Cotta, had proposed to build it in the Tinasso area. During the Municipal Council of 5 December 1920, the Cotta Council proposed instead to hold a referendum among all the people of Sanremo to choose the preferred location of the population between the two alternatives in the Tinasso area or in Valle Armea. The referendum was then fixed for 20th March 1921.

Among the other measures adopted by its Council we can also remember the realization of the electric lighting of Corso Mazzini up to the Tre Ponti; the replacement of numerous gas lamps with electric bulbs for the public lighting; the payment of the caro-viveri allowance for the municipal employees; the granting of special contributions in favour of the school coffers for the poorest pupils of the technical schools and the school patronage; the submission of an application to the Ministry of Public Works for the activation of the Sanremo-Ceriana car service, the reconstruction of the washhouse in via Morardo, and the request for an intervention by Nicolò Panizzi as supervisor of the Municipal Zoological Museum.

In order to expedite the approval of the most pressing cases, Cotta also went to Rome several times to appeal to the relevant ministries and quickly obtain a balanced-budget loan for the 1920 budget, urge the practice of moving the railway upstream and the start of the Sanremo-Ceriana car service, request the release of the Mediterranée, Bellevue and Quisisana hotels and support the petitions of lawyers and citizens against the threatened suppression of the Sanremo Court.

Cotta's administrative activity, however, had to be abruptly interrupted due to a political event independent of the local situation in the city matuziana.
In January 1921, in fact, during the Socialist Congress in Livorno, the division of the intransigent wing of the party that formed the Communist Party of Italy took place. The Sanremo town council therefore had to take note of the political division that had occurred within it, which had given the majority to the communist councillors. Invited in this sense by the head of the Communist opposition, Enrico Fornari, Cotta resigned as mayor and, in the session of the Town Council of 21 April 1921, was replaced by Fornari himself at the head of the Municipality.

After being re-elected town councillor in the administrative elections of June 1922, he remained on the Council until 1924, when the municipal administration was dissolved by authority.

During the years of the regime, due to his anti-fascist political position, he was persecuted and locked up periodically in the Santa Tecla prison whenever fascist demonstrations or visits by hierarchs were held in the city. Later he took refuge in Carpasio with his brother Emilio, who hid him for a long time in an isolated "casone" far from the town, from where he would also manage to escape from a group of fascists who had come specially from Sanremo to capture him.

After the war he resumed his professional activity as a doctor at the Casino, then joined the first democratic municipal administration elected in March 1946 and was also provincial councillor.

He died in Sanremo on 15 February 1950 and was buried in the family tomb in Pianavia (Prelà).

We also remember his poetic activity, which reveals a sensitive soul and a sincere nature, as can be seen from his numerous sonnets, suffused with deep melancholy and pervaded by great ethical tension, some of which have been published in the Famija Sanremasca magazines « Civitas Sancti Romuli » and « A Gardiöra du Matüssian ».

(source text Andrea Gandolfo)