:
Allegory of Lombardy (
Bode-Museum, Berlin) Like in the rest of Europe, during the
Romantic Era there was an awakening 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. At the same time, 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 intellectuals, presented his adhesion to this idea in some writings. They were often associated with Italian federalist movements, but they considered Lombardy as a nation instead a mere administrative division of the future state: During the
Five Days of Milan in 1848, at first, insurgents only wanted 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, was opposed to the
Piedmont intervention. After the
annexation to the
Kingdom of Sardinia (and the creation of the
Italian state), it seemed that some republican and federalist movements wanted the creation of a
State of Milan, because of the cultural, economical and social differences between Lombardy and the rest of Italy. in Milan, 1898 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 rumours of separatism came to the Italian government. In the 1950s, some small movements for autonomy appeared by Guido Calderoli, which participated in the local elections in 1956, and later involved other Lombard provinces, turning first into
Movimento Autonomista Regionale Lombardo (asking for creation of the
Lombard Region, as required by the
Italian constitution) and then into
Movimento Autonomie Regionali Padane (participating at political elections in 1958 and 1967), in the 1980s, the
Lombard League was founded (since 1989 part of the
Northern League). During the years, its political goal shifted between the separatism and the ask for a greater autonomy in the Italian state. In 2018, the independentist tendency was officially abandoned by the federal secretary
Matteo Salvini, after five years of ambiguity. , founder of the Lombard League, in 1990 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 took place. 38.3% of Lombards turned out for the referendum and 95.3% of them voted for greater autonomy. So the
president of Lombardy,
Roberto Maroni, opened the negotiations with
Rome. After the latest elections for the
central and
regional government in 2018, the new Lombard president
Attilio Fontana designated
Stefano Bruno Galli as the
autonomy assessor, waiting for the formation of the new Italian government. == Definition of
Lombardy ==