Padania

Po Valley or Pianura padana

Padania is an alternative name for the Po Valley, a major plain in the north of Italy. The term was sparingly used until the early 1990s, when Lega Nord, a federalist and, at times, separatist political party in Italy, proposed "Padania" as a possible name for an independent state in Northern Italy. Since then, it has carried strong political connotations.^[1]

In geography

The adjective padano, derived from Padus, the Latin name of the Po river, was first used in the 19th century. In its true geographical sense, Padania refers to the valley of the Po river. In fact, the French client republics in the Po Valley during the Napoleonic era included the Cispadane Republic and the Transpadane Republic, according to the custom (emerged with the French Revolution) of naming territories on the basis of watercourses. The ancient Regio XI (the region of the Roman Empire on the current territory of the Aosta Valley, Piedmont and Lombardy) has been thus referred to as Regio XI Transpadana in academic literature only in recent centuries.

The term Padania has been used mainly as a socio-economic denomination as the terms Pianura Padana or Val Padana are the standard denominations in geography textbooks and atlases. The first use of the concept in socio-economic terms dates from 1975, when Guido Fanti, the Communist President of Emilia-Romagna, proposed a union composed of Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria.^[2][3] The term was seldom used in these terms until the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation re-launched it in 1992 through the volume La Padania, una regione italiana in Europa (English: Padania, an Italian region in Europe), written by various academics.^[4]

Even if Padania is often used as a synonym for Northern Italy, in a strict geographic sense it does not include Aosta Valley, Trentino, South Tyrol, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a large portion of Veneto, Romagna, and, of course, Tuscany, Marche and Umbria, none of which are part of Northern Italy.

Since the 1960s, journalist Gianni Brera had used the term Padania to indicate the area that at the time of Cato the Elder corresponded to Cisalpine Gaul.^[5][6] In the same years and later, the term Padania was considered a geographic synonym of Po Valley and as such was included in the Enciclopedia Universo in 1965^[7] and in the Devoto–Oli dictionary of the Italian language in 1971. A further use of the term Padania was limited to some linguistic research, in relation to Gallo-Italic languages, and sometimes even extended to all regional languages distinguishing Northern from Central Italy along the La Spezia–Rimini Line.^[8]

Lega Nord, a political party created in 1991 by the union of several northern regional parties (including Lega Lombarda and Liga Veneta), later used the term for a larger geographical range than Fanti's and Brera's Padania, but with stronger political and socio-economic connotations.

In political science

In 1990 Gianfranco Miglio, a political scientist who would be elected senator for Lega Nord in 1992 and 1994, wrote a book in which he described a draft constitutional reform. According to Miglio, Padania (consisting of five regions: Veneto, Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria and Emilia-Romagna) would become one of the three hypothetical macroregions of a future Italy, along with Etruria (Central Italy) and Mediterranea (Southern Italy), while the autonomous regions (Aosta Valley, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Sicily and Sardinia) would be left with their current autonomy.^[9]

In 1993 Robert D. Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard University, wrote a book titled Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, in which he spoke of a "civic North", defined according to the inhabitants' civic traditions and attitudes, and explained its social peculiarities to the historical emergence of the free medieval communes since the 10th century.^[10] Stefano Galli, a political scientist close to the Northern League and columnist for Il Giornale and La Padania, has called Putnam's theory a source for defining Padania.^[11] Northern League's definition of Padania's boundaries is similar to Robert D. Putnam's "civic North", which also includes the central Italian regions of Tuscany, Marche and Umbria. According to the author, these regions share similar patterns of civil society, citizenship, and government with the North.^[12]

Gilberto Oneto, a student of Miglio, has researched northern traditions and culture to find evidence of the existence of a common Padanian heritage.^{[13][14][15][16][17]} Historian and linguist Sergio Salvi has also defended the concept of Padania.^[18] The existence of a "Padanian nation" has been however criticised by a number of organisations and individuals in Italy, from the Italian Geographical Society^[19] to historian Paolo Bernardini, who is a supporter of Venetian nationalism instead.^[20] Angelo Panebianco, a political scientist, once explained that, even though a "Padanian nation" does not exist yet, it might well emerge as all nations are ultimately human inventions.^[21]

In politics

The first politician to consistently use the term Padania was Guido Fanti, a leading member of the Italian Communist Party who was President of Emilia-Romagna from 1970 to 1976 (see above). In an interview with La Stampa in 1975, Fanti proposed the creation of Padania in order to go over centralism (see above).^[2]

Since 1991, Lega Nord has promoted either secession or larger autonomy for Padania, and has created a flag and a national anthem to this effect.^[22] In 1996, the "Federal Republic of Padania" was proclaimed.^[23] Subsequently, in 1997, Lega Nord created an unofficial Padanian parliament in Mantua and organised elections for it. Lega Nord also chose a national anthem: the Va, pensiero chorus from Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco, in which the exiled Hebrew slaves lament their lost homeland.

The term Padania has been also used in politics by other nationalist/separatist parties and groups, including Lega Padana, Lega Padana Lombardia, the Padanian Union, the Alpine Padanian Union, Veneto Padanian Federal Republic and the Padanian Independentist Movement.^[24]

Lega Nord's Padania

Map of Europe, showing Padania (as claimed by Lega Nord) in dark green

Nations of Padania as claimed by Lega Nord

According to Lega Nord's Declaration of Independence and Sovereignty of Padania,^[25] Padania is composed of 14 "nations" (Lombardy, Veneto, Piedmont, Tuscany, Emilia, Liguria, Marche, Romagna, Umbria, Friuli, Trentino, South Tyrol, Venezia Giulia, Aosta Valley), slightly differing from the corresponding 11 Italian regions and from Gianfranco Miglio's project.^[9] The 11 regions forming Padania, according to the party, are listed below:

Flag of Padania

Flag of Padania proposed by Lega Nord

The "Sun of the Alps" is the unofficial flag of Padania and the symbol of the Padanian nationalism. The flag has a green stylized sun on a white background. It resembles ancient ornaments which are found in the art and culture of the area, like one example of Etruscan art from the 7th century BC found at Civitella Paganico.^[26] The flag was created in the 1990s and was adopted by Lega Nord upon their declaration of Padanian independence.^[27][28]

In its previous version, the flag included a red St George's Cross and a smaller Sun of the Alps in the upper part.^[27]

Opinion polling

While support for a federal system, as opposed to a centrally administered state, receives widespread consensus within Padania, support for independence is less favoured. One poll in 1996 estimated that 52.4% of interviewees from Northern Italy considered secession advantageous (vantaggiosa) and 23.2% both advantageous and desirable (auspicabile).^[29] Another poll in 2000 estimated that about 20% of "Padanians" (18.3% in North-West Italy and 27.4% in North-East Italy) supported secession in case Italy was not reformed into a federal state.^[30]

According to a poll conducted in February 2010 by GPG, 45% of Northerners support the independence of Padania.^[31] A poll conducted by SWG in June 2010 puts that figure at 61% of Northerners (with 80% of them supporting at least federal reform), while noting that 55% of Italians consider Padania as only a political invention, against 42% believing in its real existence (45% of the sample being composed of Northerners, 19% of Central Italians and 36% of Southerners). As for federal reform, according to the poll, 58% of Italians support it.^[32][33] A more recent poll by SWG puts the support for fiscal federalism and secession respectively at 68% and 37% in Piedmont and Liguria, 77% and 46% in Lombardy, 81% and 55% in Triveneto (comprising Veneto), 63% and 31% in Emilia-Romagna, 51% and 19% in Central Italy (not including Lazio).^[34]

In business

• Cassa Padana, Italian cooperative bank
• Banca Centropadana, Italian cooperative bank

References

Further reading

• Diamanti, Ilvo (1996). Il male del Nord. Lega, localismo, secessione. Rome: Donzelli Editore. ISBN 88-7989-268-1. 
• Gomez-Reino Cachafeiro, Margarita (2002). Ethnicity and Nationalism in Italian Politics. Inventing the Padania: Lega Nord and the Northern Question. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 0-7546-1655-X. 
• Huysseune, Michel (2006). Modernity and secession. The social sciences and the political discourse of the Lega Nord in Italy. Oxford: Berg Publishers. ISBN 1-84545-061-2. 
• Mainardi, Roberto (1998). L'Italia delle regioni. Il Nord e la Padania. Milan: Bruno Mondadori. ISBN 88-424-9442-9. 

External links

• Flags of the World – Padania
• Ethnologue Report – Italy
• Short Atlas of Gallican, Romance and Cisalpine Peoples