Lombard Nationalism: Part II

History

Like in the rest of Europe, during the Romantic Era there was an awaken of the national sentiment in Lombardy. The napoleonic creation of the Cispadane Republic, which was later replaced by the Cisalpine one, opened the doors to the political debate. Carlo Botta, a piedmontese politician, wrote a book entitled Proposition to the Lombards about a way of free government, where he claimed the need of a constitution for the Lombard Nation, independent from the French one inspired by the Revolution. In the same years, Giuseppe Faroni proposed a draft constitution entitled Constitutional pole for the Lombard Republic.

The first independence movements appeared in the first half of the 19th century. Carlo Porta, one of the most important lombard intellectual, shows his adhesion to this idea in some writings. They are often associated to the Italians federalist movements, but they consider Lombardy as a nation instead a mere administrative division of the future state:

Che vegga Italia e la nazion lombarda strette ad un patto (That I'll see Italy and the Lombard nation close to a deal)
-- Pater Noster (dei Milanesi), a patriotic song of 1848

'Allegory of Lombardy' -- Giovanni Baratta

During the Five Days of Milan in 1848, at first insurgents only want a greater autonomy for Lombardy in the Austrian Empire, with the possibility to administrate itself. A large part of the leaders of the insurrection, such as Carlo Cattaneo, opposed to the Piedmont intervention.

After the annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia (and the creation of the Italian state), it seems that some republicans and federalists movements want the creation of a State of Milan, because of the cultural, economical and social differences between Lombardy and the rest of Italy.

During the riots of Milan in 1898 and the other strikes in the following years (especially in 1913), when the Kingdom had to move 30,000 soldiers), some rumors of separatism came to the Italian government.

In the 1950s some small movements for autonomy appeared, such as the Movimento Autonomista Bergamasco, founded in 1947 by Guido Calderoli, that participated to the local elections in 1956, and later involved other Lombard provinces, changing first in Movimento Autonomista Regionale Lombardo (asking the creation of the Lombard Region, as required by the Italian constitution) and at last in Movimento Autonomie Regionali Padane (participating at political elections in 1958 and 1967), before disappear in 1970. Another movement is the Unione autonomisti padani, created by Ugo Gavazzeni with the union of various autonomist movements in northern Italy, that participated at political elections in 1967.From the legacy of this experiences in the 1980s was founded the Lombard League (since 1989 flowed in the Northern League). During the years, its target changes between the separatism and the ask of a greater autonomy in the Italian state. In 2018, the independence was officially abandoned by the federal secretary Matteo Salvini, after five years of ambiguity.

In the first decades of the 21st century, some cultural initiative and political parties appeared (among which Pro Lombardia Indipendenza is the best structured one).

In 2017 an advisory referendum (done simultaneously with the Venetian one) about the concession of a greater autonomy to the Lombard Region obtains the 95.3% of Yes, with the 38.3% of affluence. So the president of Lombardy, Roberto Maroni, opened the negotiations with Rome.

After the contemporary elections for the central and regional government in 2018, the new lombard president Attilio Fontana designates Stefano Bruno Galli as autonomy assessor, waiting for the formation of the new Italian government.

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