Venice Votes on Independence from Italy This Week; Separatists Prepare Declaration, Transfer of Authority

It is a year for separatist referenda.  Scotland will hold its vote on separation from the United Kingdom on September 18th.  Catalonia, in Spain, will follow suit on December 18th—allowing the separatist government there a full three months to learn from any Scottish mistakes or successes.  Three days ago, on March 16th, the whole global order was called into question as the newly declared Republic of Crimea voted on cutting its ties to Ukraine and joining Russia.  Not to be outdone, the people of Veneto (in Italian, Veneta), the administrative region of which Venice is the capital, on the same day Crimeans went to the polls, began voting on whether to secede from the Italian Republic.

The seven provinces that form Veneto are in northeastern Italy.

An online referendum is now underway, by which Venetians can log in and answer the question, “Do you want Veneto to ­become an independent and sovereign federal republic?”  The vote is organized by Gianluca Busato, a member of the separatist party Venetian Independence (Indipendenza Veneta, or I.V.).  Busato claims that, even though it will be non-binding, it is supported by many local governments and will be “a call to arms.”  The results are to be announced on March 21st.

Gianluca Busato says, “Vote sì!”

Claims of the popularity of independence in Veneto range from 65% to 80%.  Interestingly enough, the phenomenon of Venetian nationalism is distinct from the Northern League (Lega Nord) movement, which for decades has pushed vocally for all of northern Italy, including Venice, to secede as an independent country called Padania (named for the Po River).  The League’s high water mark was its junior membership in Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition until the Euro Zone crisis brought down the Berlusconi and kicked the League out of government too.  In the late 1980s, members of the Veneto League (Ligo Veneta, or L.V.), a branch of Lega Nord, broke away and founded a separate movement to revive the Most Serene Republic of Venice (Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia), which for about a millennium was one of Europe’s most significant economic and naval powers and a major cultural center, until the Hapsburgs and Napoleon Bonaparte dismantled it in the late 18th century.  These L.V. members, in the jargon of Italian separatist politics, are a species of “Venetist” called “Serenissimists,” as distinct from the Northern League’s “Padanists.”  They went so far as to found a provisional Venetian government, calling into question the legality of the 1866 referendum which incorporated Veneto into the new Kingdom of Italy during the Risorgimento.  In a 1997 publicity stunt, a group of Serenissimists “invaded” the iconic St. Mark’s Plaza in Venice with an elaborately and patriotically decorated military tank.

The Northern League’s Umberto Bossi tried but failed
to coax Venetians toward Padanism.

The more serious and mainstream L.V. is much more popular and in fact is Veneto’s ruling party.  Veneto’s president, Luca Zaia, is the L.V. party leader.  Lega Nord, which is far more right-wing and has been buffeted lately by corruption scandals and outcries over racist, anti-immigrant comments by its politicians, has far fewer supporters in this part of the north; they got 10.5% of the vote in the 2013 regional elections, to L.V.’s 35%.  Ironically, it is Venice that Lega Nord envisions as the capital of a future Padania, rather than Turin or Milan, two more natural choices, which are Lega Nord strongholds.  The choice of Venice is probably a vain attempt to shore up support for Padanism in the northeast.

Veneto’s president, Luca Zaia, demonstrating what he’d like to do to Italy

However, the current referendum’s backers, I.V., are a far smaller splinter group which is very libertarian in its orientation.  I.V. got only 1.1% in the 2013 elections.  This despite the fact that they had organized a large independence rally in Venice the previous year (reported at the time in this blog), which culminated in the delivery to the regional government, by gondola, of a declaration of independence.

Fringe I.V. may be, and non-binding the referendum may be, but one I.V. spokesman, Lodovico Pizzati, sounds very serious when he discusses its implications. “If there is a majority yes vote,” he told a reporter, “we have scholars drawing up a declaration of independence and there are businesses in the region who say they will begin paying taxes to local authorities instead of to Rome.”  The new state is to be called the Republic of Veneto (Repubblica Veneta).  Pizzati is a World Bank economist who currently lives in California.  Another I.V. member, Raffaele Serafini, told media, “Venetians not only want out of Italy, but we also want out of the euro, the E.U. and NATO.”  This view is distinct from the pro-Brussels separatist sentiment found in Scotland or Catalonia, but it is not clear if most Venetans share Serafini’s views.  If so, then one of the obstacles to Scottish separatists reaching a majority—fear of ejection from the E.U.—is one which Venetists don’t need to worry about.

Lodovico Pizzati in St. Mark’s Plaza in 2012

Veneto’s nearly 5 million people are about a twelfth of Italy’s population.  Nonetheless, it constitutes about a tenth of Italy’s gross domestic product (G.D.P.), and separatists point out that a Republic of Veneto would be Europe’s seventh-strongest economy.  As in many of Italy’s administrative regions, Veneto’s dialect of Italian is increasingly referred to as a separate language.

Venetian flags mingle with Lombard and Padanian ones at a rally.

As Zaia put it, “The push for independence comes from the people.  It is a democratic request born of Rome’s indifference.  If Barcelona [i.e., Catalonia] gets independence, Veneto could adopt the same method and get it too.  We have knocked politely on the door of federalism, but it did not open.  Now we will break down the door.”

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in mid 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Lega Nord’s vision of the future is different from that of Venetists and Serenissimists.

Related articles from this blog:

“Lega Nord, Flemish Separatists, Others at Secret Vienna Summit Plot Far-Right Slate for Strasbourg” (Nov. 2013)

“Italophone Swiss Bid Ciao but Not Auf Wiedersehen to Right-Wing Ticinese Nationalist Giuliano Bignasca” (March 2013)

“10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2013” (Dec. 2012)

“Venice Declares Independence—via Gondola; Gibraltar, Kosovo Jostle for Football Independence; Musqueam Win Vancouver Condo Battle; Nuwaubians in Georgia; Mauritius Rallies Africans to Take Chagos Isles Back from U.K.: The Week in Separatist News” (Oct. 2012)

“Valtellina: A History Lesson on Europe’s Tense North–South Border” (July 2012)

“The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists” (including Lega Nord’s Renzo Bossi) (April 2012)

“Umberto Bossi’s ‘Republic of Padania’ Expands into Central Europe” (Jan. 2012)

“10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011)

Umberto Bossi’s “Republic of Padania” Expands into Central Europe

A month ago, I listed Padania—the new state some Italians want to create in the northern third of their country—as number eight among “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”  The party pushing this idea, the Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania—called Lega Nord (Northern League) for short—is not just any minor separatist movement.  It is the main political party in Italy’s large Veneto region (which includes Venice) and is the second-largest in Lombardy, which contains Milan and nearly 10 million people.  Italy’s fractious coalition politics allowed the League to become a junior partner in the Milanese media mogul Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right coalition government in 2008.  The League’s flamboyant and confrontational leader, Umberto Bossi, became Prime Minister Berlusconi’s Minister for Federal Forms, pushing the agenda of, if not necessarily independence, at least a much more federal system, with much more power devolved to the regions.

The proposed borders of an independent Padania

Then, in 2011, the European debt crisis spread from Greece to Italy and brought down the Berlusconi government.  The new prime minister, Mario Monti, a shy economist and technocrat beholden to European Union institutions, left the Northern League out of his new coalition—despite the fact that Monti, like Bossi, is a Lombard.  The League saw this as a stinging betrayal.  In my earlier post, I predicted that sudden marginalization after having tasted the highest echelons of government would galvanize the Northern League’s separatist spirit.  What I didn’t predict was that this fall from power would push Bossi, a former Communist from Lombardy, over the edge.

Umberto Bossi

Bossi had long called for Italy’s more prosperous, more industrialized, and culturally less Mediterranean northern regions—Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, Liguria, Lombardy, Piedmont, Trentino-Alto-Adige, Val d’Aosta, Veneto—to secede as Padania.  But after being forced out of government the League now asks all party members to pledge allegiance to the cause of Padanian secession.

And now media are reporting that at a conference last month Bossi unveiled his plans for a future Padania to be the heart of a new, greater Central European state that would also include Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, and France’s Savoy region.  Bossi unveiled a map of this new superstate, colored in by his equally flamboyant son, Renzo Bossi.  Has the Northern League gone crazy?

Imperial Lombard cartographer

and apple-fallen-not-far-from-tree Renzo Bossi

It would be one thing if Bossi saw this Greater Padania as part of an integrated Europe, but Bossi over the years has become as Euro-skeptical as Margaret Thatcher.  The League laments northern Italy’s embeddedness in a Euro zone that allows inefficient and corrupt cultures like those of Greece, southern Italy, and Portugal to drag down the industrialized north.  And, make no mistake, Bossi thinks Italy is northern Europe.  Bossi, who spent more than ten years as a Member of European Parliament, now calls the E.U. both “fascist” and “Stalinist” and would like to take Padania out of it.  Now, it seems, he would like to punch an even larger hole in the middle of Europe.

Padania’s flag

Just to take the example of Switzerland—which, unlike other parts of the Greater Padania on Bossi’s fantasy map, is not in the E.U.—the idea that German-speaking Swiss would consent to be a province within a country ruled from Venice where Italian would be the predominant language is not only highly unlikely but rolling-on-the-floor laughable.  Switzerland is not only one of the Europe’s most xenophobic countries, but most of its xenophobia is directed eastward and, especially, southward (even though Italian is one of Switzerland’s national languages, spoken in the border canton of Ticino).  The Swiss do not see much distinction between northern and southern Italy and certainly do not regard Lombards, Ligurians, and Venetians as fellow ... Aryans-or-whatever, blond though some of them may be.  Much the same could be said of Austrian attitudes toward Italy, despite the fact that there is a very large community of German-speakers in the South Tyrol region of northeastern Italy.  (That region also has a large vibrant linguistic minority of Friulians, speaking a variety of the Rhaeto-Romanic language also in use on a much smaller scale in southeastern Switzerland, where it is called Romansch.)

Do you think the folks who made this poster

would swear allegiance to an Italian-run government?

As for Savoy, there are historical resonances Bossi is building on: the medieval Duchy of Savoy had its capital in Turin and extended to the Mediterranean; then the region was made part of the Kingdom of Sicily (later Sardinia), until France absorbed it for the first time during the French Revolution.  Sardinia seized it back after Napoleon’s fall, but then Napoleon III negotiated its return to France in 1858 in a secret deal that Savoyard activists today still recall bitterly.  Culturally and historically, then, Savoy is arguably half Italian already.  But Bavaria (which has its own marginal separatist movement)—that is hard to picture.

The medieval Duchy of Savoy

Bossi’s pipe dream envisions a Lombardy that is at the heart of a new Mitteleuropa, embracing those parts of Germany that are the least Nordic—the southern, Alpine region of the Alemannic dialects.  One could be forgiven for detecting a whiff of Axis geography in all of this; after all, Adolf Hitler was from Austria, Berchtesgaden was right on the Austro-Bavarian border, and Benito Mussolini was from Emilia–Romagna and emigrated to Switzerland as a young man—etc. etc.  In fact, though, what Bossi’s map shows more than anything else is a revived (but modified) Holy Roman Empire.  And just guess who would be Emperor.

Mario Monti—and the circumstances of recent political history—had already temporarily marginalized the Northern League.  But with this kind of talk, Umberto Bossi will marginalize it permanently.



(P.S.: I have had trouble finding a clear image of Renzo Bossi’s map.  The closest I can find is the following map (see below), from an “Anthrocivitas” forum thread on the subject.  If any readers find a more reliably genuine or better-resolution image for this map, please let me know!  And please help me understand how Bossi plans to redraw these other borders.  What is that I see there?  Southeast England plus Saxony and the Low Countries??  A restored East Germany??  A Viking reannexation of the Scottish Highlands??)