Has anyone heard of Cantieri Navali Palanca?

Hi there, and welcome to YF.
I'm afraid you will struggle to find any details on Palanca, because even among Italians (as myself), it's not a well known yard.
Not because they didn't build good boats - rather the opposite, in fact - but they didn't last long enough to become well established/recognized.
All I can offer is an old article about the yard (see attachment), but it's in Italian.

As an aside, I got in touch with the owner of the (one and only in the US, I suppose!) Palanca based in Los Angeles, a few years ago.
She was actually in Marina del Rey, not in long Beach, but maybe she was moved, I don't know.
Incidentally, she was indeed called 68, and advertised for charter as such, but I believe she's actually a refitted/extended 60, i.e. the same boat model as yours.
In fact, the 60 was the larger model ever built by Palanca.

I hope you'll enjoy her, and feel free to post some photos if you like.
I'm not the only one around here who likes to see photos of boats, and even more so when they are not very easy to see around, as is surely the case with yours!

Glad to have helped.
She looks in great shape for her age - fenders aside, hoping you don't mind me pointing that out...
Early 90s, I suppose? Surely pre-dates the CE-RCD regulation anyhow, hence the RINA paperwork, which was required in Italy, at that size.
In fact, as a folkloristic note, RINA used to require also the SSB radio for any vessel above 16m, which explains also the two long whip antennas.
All rather useless for Med cruising anyhow - to the point that I stripped all that in my previous boat, whose age was similar and hence built according to RINA rules.

PS: do you possibly know if the hardtop was retrofitted? I don't think any Palanca 60 originally came with that from the builder.

Well, that's a rather classic open design.
I guess you could say she's also similar to some Italcraft and Sarnico (the earlier ones, before they introduced the windscreen curvature joining the radar arch).
But AFAIK, Palanca designed their own hull moulds.
One peculiarity that I recall from the only occasion when I saw one on the hard is a rather flared hull at the bow bottom.
You can't really appreciate that from the above photo, but in flesh I noticed it because you don't normally see it in this type of boats...

There can be several reasons for the delayed RINA registration.
A typical one is when the boat is kept by the builder as a demo boat, with a so-called temporary registration, that boatbuilders are allowed to use in IT.
Another one (a bit more likely, in the case of Palanca) is that the boat was part of a company asset in a liquidation procedure, upon termination of the business.
Sometimes, these things can take ages around here... But 8 years is a helluva lot of time!
So, another possibility that springs to mind is that the boat was originally registered in a Country whose requirements didn't include the RINA certification, but it was required later by a new buyer.
Anyhow, unless there is some specific evidence of what happened in your papers, it's impossible to tell for sure.

That aside, out of curiosity I played with google a bit, and I believe to have found an old ad published when your boat was for sale.
You know, there aren't many Palanca 60 around, and even less with some peculiarities like that hardtop and swim platform!
I'm not posting the link because I'm not sure if you like to see it in a public webpage, but I can PM it to you if you wish.
Some of the photo explain very well what you mean with the small forest used to build the interior, those walls with matched root wood panels are really impressive!

I also noticed one thing that maybe you already modified, but just in case you didn't, I'm talking of the helm control levers.
Attached is a view of the throttle ones, which I extracted from a dashboard photo, but the same goes for the gearbox levers on the other side of the helm.
For some reason that I can't understand, those levers were removed and reinstalled swapped, i.e. curved outward instead of inward.
Now, that's no big deal for the gearboxes, but for the throttles it's much more convenient to have the levers curved inward, because that allows you to move both with just one hand.
As an aside, I would consider swapping the position of the g/box and throttle control boxes, moving the latter to the right hand, but that's just personal preference (sorry Reggie, I know you don't agree! ).

Of course, pretty much like for the fenders, forget my comments if you already took care of it!