Sicilians
The Spanish era ended in 1735, when Charles V was crowned king. For the better part of the next century-and-a-half, Sicily was in personal union with the other Southern Italian Kingdom of Naples, with the official residence located in Naples. In 1861, however, Sicily became part of the Kingdom of Italy as a result of the Risorgimento. After the unification of Italy and the Fascist era, a wave of Sicilian nationalism led to the adoption of the Statute of Sicily, under which the island has become an autonomous region. Since 1946, the island enjoys the most advanced special status of all the autonomous regions, which allows the Sicilian residents to keep 100% of the revenue from all the taxes, without giving back any to the central government in Rome.
Sicily
Greek Syracuse controlled eastern Sicily while Carthage controlled the West. The two cultures began to clash, leading to the Greek-Punic wars. Greece had begun to make peace with the Roman Republic in 262 BC, and the Romans sought to annex Sicily as their republic's first province. Rome attacked Carthage's holdings in Sicily in the First Punic War and won, making Sicily the first Roman province outside of the Italian Peninsula by 242 BC.