come mi hai indirittamente suggerito da un'altra parte, penso che il problem risiede nel dispatcher-servlet principalmente.
modificandolo in questo modo (e modificando il controller, il web.xml per far funzionare il resto), adesso funziona:
codice:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<!-- was: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> -->
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
       xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
       xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
       xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.package" />
    <mvc:annotation-driven />
    
    <bean id="viewResolver"
          class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver"
          p:prefix="/WEB-INF/jsp/"
          p:suffix=".jsp" />
    
    <mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/persona/Template/Dark_Version/" />
</beans>
tra le varie cose, non ho più il SimpleUrlHandlerMapping.

ciao!!