Two verb tenses are used in colloquial as well as written Italian to express past events.
They are the preterit(passato remoto) and the present perfect(passato prossimo). The
preterit is a simple tense, expressed by a single verb: parlai(I spoke)(yo hablè in Spanish),
cantasti(you sang) etc. It is used mostly in narrative writing to describe events that
occurred in the remote past. It is also called the historical past. In speech and informal
writing, however, the preterit has been replaced by the present perfect.

The present perfect is a compound tense, made up of two verbs: the present of the auxiliary
avere or essere and the past participle of the verb: ho parlato(I spoke, I have spoken),(Yo
he hablado), ho cantato(I sang, I have sung), sono andato(I went, I have gone, etc. The
present perfect is preferred in colloquial or standard Italian by those living in northern Italy,
while people in southern and central Italy still prefer using the preterit, even when speaking
about recent events.

Remember the preterit tense is used mostly in the southern part of Italy and in literature and history
or when telling a story written or otherwise.(?)

People from southern Italy. Do you agree with this. Seems everybody in Italy is using the passato
remoto in speech now. E vero o non è vero?

Italian
In Italian, the preterite is called passato remoto (literally "remote past"). It is a past tense that indicates an action taken once and completed far in the past (mangiai, "I ate"). This is opposed to the imperfetto tense, which refers to a repeated, continuous, or habitual past action (mangiavo, "I was eating" or "I used to eat") and to the passato prossimo (literally "close past"), which refers to an action completed recently (ho mangiato, "I have eaten").

Colloquially, the use of passato remoto increases going from North to South of Italy. While Northern speakers tend to use passato prossimo in any perfective situation, Southern ones tend to use passato remoto even for recent events.

Typical conjugations:

-are verbs (parlare) [Regular] -ere verbs (credere)* [Irregular] -ere verbs (prendere)* -ire verbs (finire)
io -ai (parlai) -ei (credei) -i (presi) -ii (finii)
tu -asti (parlasti) -esti (credesti) -esti (prendesti) -isti (finisti)
lui -ò (parlò) -é (credé) -e (prese) -ì (finì)
noi -ammo (parlammo) -emmo (credemmo) -emmo (prendemmo) -immo (finimmo)
voi -aste (parlaste) -este (credeste) -este (prendeste) -iste (finiste)
loro -arono (parlarono) -erono (crederono) -ero (presero) -irono (finirono)

*Many -ere verbs in Italian have stem alternations in the 1st person singular, 3rd person singular and 3rd person

It is true only for those who speak strict dialect, especially old people. Everyone with an average culture avoids using passato remoto, it's hard to hear it nowadays.

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Villa, your posts in relation to grammar are inspiring me to get back on here and write some of my own...perhaps I will do a post on the imperfect tense since you have covered the present perfect.

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Dimmi con chi vai e ti dirò chi sei.

Grazie Zidanie. This is what I wanted to know for sure. It makes sense.
I have a friend from Sicily who's 70 years old. He seems to agree with this.

Grazie Giacomo.