Venetian nationalism

Venetian nationalism (also Venetism, from the Venetian/Italian name, ''venetismo'') is a nationalist, but primarily regionalist, political movement active mostly in Veneto, Italy, as well as in other parts of the former Republic of Venice.

Generally speaking, Venetists promote the distinct Venetian identity and the rediscovery of the Republic of Venice's heritage, traditions, culture, and language and/or demand more autonomy or even independence for Veneto from Italy. According to journalist Paolo Possamai, Venetism is "the strain of Veneto and Venetians toward the recognition of their identity and autonomy". Venetism is a broad movement, which definitely includes Venetist parties, notably Liga Veneta, but also encompasses people from several political parties. In 1982 Goffredo Parise, a writer and journalist, wrote: "Veneto is my fatherland. ..Even if a Republic of Italy exists, this abstract idea is not my Fatherland .. We Venetians have travelled throughout the world, but our Fatherland, that for which we would fight if it were necessary to fight, is Veneto. ..When I see "River sacred to the Fatherland" written on the bridges spanning the Piave, I am moved, not because I think of Italy, but rather because I think of Veneto."

Most Venetists consider Veneto a nation distinct from Italy and some refuse the validity of the result of the referendum through which Veneto (or, better, ''Venetia'') was united with Italy in 1866. Some of them have long proposed a re-edition of that referendum and campaign for the independence of ''Venetia'', a country that would be composed of the territories of the historical Venetian Republic, covering Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and large chunks of Lombardy (the provinces of Brescia, the Bergamo, the area around Crema, and a portion of the province of Mantua). The proposal, regarding to Veneto alone, has more recently gained the support of Liga Veneta, the Government of Veneto, and the majority of the Regional Council of Veneto, which endorsed a bill aimed at organising the referendum in 2014. The Constitutional Court ruled that referendum out as contrary to the Constitution, but authorised an autonomy referendum, which took place on 22 October 2017: 57.2% of Venetians participated in the referendum and 98.1% voted "yes". Consequently, President of Veneto Luca Zaia started a negotiation with the Italian government.

Although it usually refers to the whole Venetian autonomist movement, the term "Venetism" is sometimes used to identify specifically culture-oriented Venetists, hardline Venetists or those Venetists who refuse the concept of Padania, a proposed country by Lega Nord, of which Liga Veneta (the most successful Venetist party so far) is the "national" section in Veneto. Alberto Gardin, a pro-independence publisher and later self proclaimed 121st Doge who supports the boycott of Italian elections, offers another interpretation by considering "Venetism" a "partisan concept, that is part of the Italian political system (Venetists, as Socialists, Communists, PD, PdL, etc.)".

Background and history

Annexation of Veneto by Italy

The Venetian Republic existed for 1100 years from 697 to 1797 (submitted to Byzantium until the 9th century), and was the one of the first modern republics of the world. After defeating the Republic of Genoa in a series of wars, it became the most powerful Mediterranean maritime power, and at its height, extended its rule from large parts of the Po Valley to the coastal regions and islands of present-day Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece. Venice was a leading power of the Western world in the 15th and 16th centuries. In 1797, after a long decline, through the Treaty of Campo Formio, Napoleon traded what remained of the Republic with Austria in exchange for other territories. In 1848, Venetians, led by Daniele Manin, rebelled against Austrian rule and established the Republic of San Marco. Manin, who opposed the proposed unification by some Venetians with the Kingdom of Sardinia, resigned, but returned to lead again the opposition against Vienna in 1849.

Venetian territories with the former Duchy of Mantua and Friuli were annexed to Italy in 1866, five years after the Italian unification and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy under the House of Savoy in 1861. The unification of Veneto with Italy was the result of the Austro-Prussian War, won by the Prussians, Italy's allies. In the Italian unification process, the conflict is known as Third War of Independence. Austria lost Venetia, ceded to Napoleon III of France, who in turn ceded it to Italy. Austria refused to give Venetian territories directly to Italy because the Austrians had crushed the Italians during the war, defeating the Italians on land during the Battle of Custoza (24 June) and on sea during the Battle of Lissa (20 July). Giuseppe Garibaldi's Hunters of the Alps had some success against the Austrians at the Battle of Bezzecca (21 July), but the Italian government ordered Garibaldi to withdraw when Prussia and Austria concluded an armistice. With the Peace of Prague (23 August), Austria agreed to the incorporation of Venetia in the Kingdom of Italy. The same point was repeated in the Treaty of Vienna (12 October), achieved through the mediation of France.

The Venetian territory was first ceded by Austria to France (under a treaty signed by General Karl Moering, on behalf of Franz Joseph I of Austria, and General Edmond Le Bœuf, on behalf of Napoleon III) as a compensation for French neutrality during the war. According to the treaty, France ceded Venetia to Italy "under the reservation of the consent of the people duly consulted". Whether an option other than becoming Italian was available was unclear, nor was the treaty any more precise on how to consult the people. Venetia was already under Italian control after the French government renounced to it on 19 October.

This increases doubts on the real importance of the plebiscite and leading historians suggest that the referendum in Venetia was held under military pressure, as a mere 0.01% of voters (69 out of more than 642,000 ballots) voted against the annexation and a mere 0.1% (567 ballots) was null, and that it was ultimately rigged. Some historians, who investigated into the historical archive of the Austrian foreign ministry, also suggest that the referendum was a mere administrative affair to Italy, just to formalise the sovereignty on a territory already under its possession, and that no real choice nor free vote was granted to the local population. The plebiscite could have been a mere demonstration to gain legitimacy after the bad conduct of Italy during the so-called Third War of Independence.

The Kingdom of Italy adopted Italian as the official language. Venetians, similarly to several other regional communities, largely rejected that and continued to use their own Venetian language, often dubbed as dialect. Linguistic nationalism soon started to be part of Venetian culture, and during the last decades of the 19th century, also some revolts against southern Italian bureaucrats occurred. After its incorporation to Italy, Venetia was so poor that millions of Venetians had to emigrate toward the Americas, especially Brazil and Argentina (three millions left their homeland from 1870 and 1910), without losing their heritage, so even today, many Venetian descendants in Latin America, most notably in two Brazilian southern states, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, speak Venetian as their mother tongue.

World Wars and the Italian Republic

Right after World War I, the economic and political situation in Veneto was critical, so that a former Prime Minister and native of Venice, Luigi Luzzatti, wrote to Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and told him there could be a "Venetian Ireland", in parallel to the simultaneous Irish War of Independence, while the prefect of Treviso signalled the risk that a separatist movement aimed at separating Veneto from Italy might flourish in the province of Treviso.

Precursors of the present-day Venetist movement date back to before World War II and were both left- and right-wing. In 1920 ''La Riscossa'', a Venetian newspaper close to the Socialists and the Republicans, espoused the need for a "united elective governorate with autonomous and competent technical and administrative organs" as an alternative to the "central political rule" Guido Bergamo, a Republican member of the Chamber of Deputies elected in Veneto, wrote that "the Venetian problem is so acute that from today on we will preach the rebellion of Venetians. Citizens, let's not pay taxes, not recognise the central government in Rome, chase away prefects, retain the money from direct taxes in Veneto". Shortly after Italico Corradino Cappellotto, a member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Italian People's Party, launched the first Venetist party forth of the 1921 general election: the Lion of Saint Mark won 6.1% of the votes in the province of Treviso.Francesco Jori, ''Dalla Łiga alla Lega. Storia, movimenti, protagonisti'', Marsilio, Venice 2009, pp. 35, 41Ezio Toffano,
Short History of the Venetian Autonomism
'', Raixe Venete

After the takeover of Benito Mussolini, who among other things proposed to eradicate the local languages in favour of Italian language widespread, the rise of Fascism, World War II, and the birth of the Italian Republic, Venetist ideas lost ground, in an era in which the "myth of the indivisibility and the unity" of the country was strong even in Veneto. However, the campaign of Mussolini to eradicate regional languages was largely unsuccessful in the region, which soon became a stronghold of the Christian Democracy (DC) party due to the leading role of the Catholic Church in the region. In the 1948 general election Christian Democrats won 60.5% of the vote in Veneto.

Since 1919, Venetia plus the newly annexed territories from Austria, which included Trentino and South Tyrol, were called the Three Venices (''Tre Venezie'', whereof '' Triveneto''), meaning ''Venezia Euganea'' (Veneto plus large chunks of Friuli), ''Venezia Giulia'' (the eastern part of current Friuli-Venezia Giulia) and ''Venezia Tridentina'' (Trentino and South Tyrol). However, under the Constitution of Italy adopted in 1948, only Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Friuli-Venezia Giulia were granted of the status of special-statute autonomous region and the connected special privileges, mainly including fiscal autonomy. Hence, the proposals by some groups of unifying Veneto with the two regions cited above (or with Trentino alone) or giving also Veneto an autonomous statute.

Comeback of Venetist ideas

Venetist ideas made a comeback in the 1960s, when the Venetian Regionalist Autonomous Movement (MARV) campaigned for the institution of the ordinary regions (including Veneto), prefigured by the Italian Constitution. The ordinary regions were finally instituted in 1970.

Since the 1970s, Veneto experienced a dramatic economic boom due to a new production model based on small enterprises. The high burden of taxes and bureaucracy, associated with the increasing frustration with the inefficient and overstaffed Italian government in Rome, that continued to channel northern taxes as massive development aid to the corrupt and backward southern regions, was the key element, along with linguistic and historical claims, that led to the formation of Liga Veneta (LV) in January 1980. The opening speech of the first congress of the party in December 1979 recited: "Today for Venetians the moment has come, after 113 years of Italian unitary colonisation, to take their natural and human resources back, to fight against the wild exploitation that has brought emigration, pollution, and rooting out from their culture". European integration through the European Union (EU) was seen as an opportunity to give back to Veneto its autonomy.

One of the regional leaders of Christian Democracy (DC), Antonio Bisaglia, early understood Veneto's demand of more autonomy and that his party, the dominant force in Venetian politics since 1946, would have been the main victim of the rise of LV as both parties competed for the support of the middle class. He thus proposed the evolution of the DC into a regional party on the model of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria. In 1982, Bisaglia tellingly declared, "Veneto would be mature for a federalist state, but this state, centralist and bureaucratic s it is will never concede autonomy to my region". Opposition from Rome and Bisaglia's sudden death in 1984 stopped the plan of a regional DC on the "Bavarian model". Giancarlo Galan, regional leader of Forza Italia and President of Veneto from 1995 to 2010, made a similar proposal in 2008, taking example mainly from the South Tyrolean People's Party, but his "Forza Veneto" remained just an idea.

The LV, whose leader in the 1980s and early 1990s was Franco Rocchetta, made its main electoral debut in the 1983 general election, when it garnered 4.3% in Veneto, resulting in two elects to the Italian Parliament. The party suffered many splits in its first decade of life and became a large political force only after its federation with other regional leagues, notably including Umberto Bossi's Lega Lombarda, which resulted in Lega Nord (LN) in 1991: in the 1996 general election, the party was Veneto's largest with 29.3%. However, clashes between Bossi and hardcore Venetists led to several splits; in 1994, Rocchetta left in protest, but more damaging was the 1998 split led by Fabrizio Comencini and Alessio Morosin, who launched Liga Veneta Repubblica (LVR). As a result, in the 2001 general election, the LV garnered a mere 10.2% of the vote, its worst score since 1987, while the LVR gained 4.9%. As the latter faded, the LV returned to gain ground in the 2005 regional election, despite the meteoric success of North-East Project (PNE). More recently, a string of separatist parties, notably including Venetian Independence (IV), emerged.

Both in 1992 and 2000 the Italian Constitutional Court rejected proposals for an autonomy referendum, brought forward by the Regional Council of Veneto.http://www.forumcostituzionale.it/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/nota_118_2015_conte.pdf

In the 2010 regional election the LV, in steady rise since 2001, was by far the largest party in the region with 35.2% of the vote, while its leader Luca Zaia was elected President of Veneto by a landslide 60.2%. The combined result of Venetist parties was 37.6%, the highest so far.

In the 2015 regional election, the LV set another record by winning 40.9% of the vote (combined result of party list, 17.8%, and Zaia's personal list, 23.1%) and Zaia was re-elected President of Veneto with 50.1% of the vote and a more coherently Venetist coalition. Separatist parties (Venetian Independence, Independence We Veneto and Veneto Confederal State) obtained 5.4% of the vote, while other regionalist and/or Venetist parties ( Tosi List for Veneto, LTV's sponsored ''Il Veneto del Fare'' list, North-East Union, and Autonomous Veneto Project) another 8.0% of the vote. Consequently, a majority of regional councillors adhered, at least to some extent, to Venetism.

In the 2020 regional election, the LV set one more record by winning 61.5% of the vote (combined result of party list, 16.9%, and Zaia's personal list, 44.6%) and Zaia was re-elected President by a landslide 76.8% of the vote, more than any other candidate in any other region of Italy. Minor Venetist lists and parties (Venetian Autonomy List — sponsored by the LV and including Liga Veneta Repubblica —, the Party of Venetians, Venetian Left and Veneto for the Autonomies) obtained a further 4.1% of the vote. As a result, 34 out of 51 seats in the Regional Council were controlled by Venetists, 33 by LV members.

Recent developments

2012–2015 opinion polls on independence

While support for a federal system, as opposed to a centrally administered state, receives widespread consensus in Veneto, support for independence is less favoured. Recent polls show a rise of independentism. According to an opinion poll made in December 2011, 50% of Venetians support the independence of Veneto. More strikingly, an opinion poll published on ''Il Gazzettino'' in January 2012 put those favoring independence at 53.3% (with the support from foreign-born Venetians at 55.0%). According to the same pollster, the support for independence rose to 56.7% in January 2013.

According to a February 2014 poll by Ixè, in a hypothetical referendum on independence, 47% of Venetians would vote yes and 26% no. According to a March 2014 poll by Ilvo Diamanti's Demos&Pi, 55% of Venetians favoured independence, 39% opposed it and the remaining 6% did not answer. According to a similar poll conducted by Istituto Piepoli, 64% of Venetians would vote in favour of more autonomy with 19% against, and 51% would vote for independence with 32% against. According to a Demos&Pi poll taken in October 2014, 53% of Venetians favoured independence, thus making Veneto the most separatist region in Italy, followed by Sardinia (45%) and Sicily (44%). In March 2015 Demos&Pi found that 57% of Venetians (including 83% of Liga Veneta– Lega Nord's voters) favoured independence.

Resolution 44/2012 on self-determination

In 2012 Venetian Independence (IV), notably including Lodovico Pizzati, Gianluca Busato and Alessio Morosin, collected more than 20,000 signatures in support for a referendum on independence and presented them to President Luca Zaia. Zaia informed the Regional Council and its President Clodovaldo Ruffato asked an opinion to the legal office, which explained that such a referendum was not legal under the Constitution of Italy. On 6 October IV organised a march in Venice, during which it proposed a resolution (44/2012) for a consultative referendum on independence to be approved by the Regional Council: the text of the resolution was given to Giovanni Furlanetto, LV regional councillor, who supported the proposition. Another Council member, Mariangelo Foggiato of North-East Union (UNE), officially presented the resolution in the Council. On 17 October a total of 42 regional councillors out of 60 officially asked a discussion on the issue.

On 28 November the Council approved the resolution, in which "independence" was replaced by "self-determination", with 29 votes in favour, 2 against and 5 abstentions. Those in favour included Foggiato, LV's entire group, most councillors of The People of Freedom, Pietrangelo Pettenò of the Communist Refoundation Party– Federation of the Left, Diego Bottacin of Toward North and independent councillor Sandro Sandri, who had expounded the resolution at the start of the session, while the entire group of the Democratic Party left the floor in protest, but proclaimed their support for a special statute for Veneto. The document required Zaia and Ruffato to urgently open talks with the European Union (EU) and the United Nations in order to come up with a referendum proposal that will establish the will of the Venetian people on its self-determination. To achieve this goal, the two Presidents would have benefited from the help of a special commission of jurists.

Petition to the EU and international support

On 10 January 2013 a delegation of IV submitted to the European Commission in Brussels a petition, signed by 50,000 European citizens, mainly Venetians, to endorse the referendum on self-determination. The collection of signatures for the petition was also supported by Domà Nunch in Lombardy. According to IV leaders, the EU should support the referendum and guarantee its result, a notion which was contradicted by the attitudes of EU institutions toward the 2014 Scottish referendum.

In March an appeal by international academics in support of resolution 44 was issued. The declaration, promoted by Marco Bassani, was signed by Frank Van Dun, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Donald Livingston, Ralph Raico, and Pascal Salin, along with Paolo Bernardini, Carlo Lottieri and Alessandro Vitale. According to the appeal, "the self-determination process" of Veneto "will be an important step toward a better Europe and men of goodwill have to do everything possible to ensure that the electoral process leading to the independence referendum takes place without tension and with respect for all the people involved". In Lombardy Bassani, Lottieri and several intellectuals around ''L'Indipendenza'' newspaper formed the Lombard Committee for Resolution 44.

Further steps toward a referendum

After a hunger strike by two members of IV, in March 2013 Zaia and Ruffato implemented the first step mandated by resolution 44 by appointing the special commission of jurists who would examine the referendum issue. The commission was composed of six experts, including IV's Luca Azzano Cantarutti.

On 2 April Stefano Valdegamberi, floor leader of the Union of the Centre, who had abstained on Resolution 44 in November 2012, introduced a bill (342/2013) in order to call a referendum on independence by the end of the year. By 7 June the bill was endorsed by more than 15 regional councillors, sufficient to convene a special session of the Council on the issue. The Council discussed it on 30 July and 17 September, but in both cases no decision was taken.

On 5 April Castellavazzo, Belluno (mayor: Franco Roccon, The People of Freedom) was the first municipality to pass a motion in support of bill 342. Since then, more than 180 ''comuni'' (out of 581), led by mayors of different parties and representing about 1,800,000 Venetians (out of approximately 4,860,000), expressed their support for it; they notably include Verona, Rovigo, Bassano del Grappa, Castelfranco Veneto, Vittorio Veneto, Arzignano, Legnago, Montebelluna, Jesolo, Montecchio Maggiore, Oderzo and Cittadella. Among provinces, Padua, Verona, Treviso and Venice, for a total of about 3,510,000 inhabitants, endorsed the bill.

In February 2014 Liga Veneta–Lega Nord launched its own campaign for a referendum on independence.

On 1 April 2014 a committee of the Regional Council put forward bills calling for a referendum on independence and on more autonomy for the region. The move was supported by the representatives of Liga Veneta, Forza Italia (the minority faction), New Centre-Right, Popular Future, Union of the Centre and North-East Union, with the opposition of the Democratic Party, Italy of Values and the Federation of the Left. The day after, all the floor leaders of the parties (but the federation of the left) represented in the council officially asked the Italian government to give Veneto the status of a special-statute autonomous region and fiscal autonomy. The final document was approved by Liga Veneta, Forza Italia (both fations), New Centre Right, Union of the Centre, Italy of Values and North-East Union.

On 10 June the Regional Council discussed and passed a law concerning five referendum questions concerning special autonomy. On 12 June the same legislative assembly passed Valdegamberi's bill 342/2013 in order to hold a referendum on the independence (question: "Do you want Veneto to become a sovereign and independent republic?") with 30 yeas, 12 nays and 3 abstentions. A year later the Constitutional Court ruled the independence referendum out as contrary to the Constitution, but authorised one of the five autonomy referendums ("Do you want the Region of Veneto to be granted of further forms and special conditions of autonomy?"). The event was unique as the Court had previously rejected proposals for similar referendums brought forward by the Regional Council of Veneto.

Online referendum on independence

Plebiscite 2013 (P2013), a non-partisan committee organised ''Plebiscito.eu'', an online independence referendum, with no official recognition, for 16–21 March. P2013 had been launched by a group of splinters from IV, led by Lodovico Pizzati and Gianluca Busato, in July 2013.

According to ''Plebiscito.eus staff, 2.36 million Venetians (63.2% of all eligible voters) participated in the online referendum and 89.1% of them (that is to say 56.6% of all eligible voters) voted yes. This was enough for P2013 to proclaim Veneto's independence from Italy in Treviso on the night of 21 March. Voters approved also the adoption of the Euro (51.4% yes), EU membership (55.7% yes) and NATO membership (64.5% yes).

The event was covered by several international media. During an interview with foreign journalists on 19 March, President Zaia announced that he too had voted (yes) in the poll, promised that he would bring bill 342 again to the discussion of the Regional Council and explained that he would seek "total independence" for Veneto.

On 28 April, during a visit in Veneto, Minister of Interior Angelino Alfano acknowledged that "there is a Venetian question, which will be central in the government's relation with regions". In reference to what he called "Agenda Veneto", he said: "We think that Veneto could be the laboratory for a form of strong and advanced federalism. ..We cannot close our eyes in front of independentist risings. ..The answer is dual: enhancing autonomy and improving the government's services". For his part, Zaia explained to Alfano the "legitimate request of Venetians" for autonomy and independence, and that "the issue of autonomy and the desire of independence of Venetians cannot be resolved with an aspirin", concluding that "if Rome continues to sleep, it is inevitable that Veneto will organise by itself".

Autonomy referendum and negotiation

In March 2016 President Zaia announced that he had written to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in order to start the negotiation both on the organisation of the referendum on autonomy and the devolution of further powers to Veneto according to article 116 of the Constitution. Zaia proposed the referendum to be held on the very same day of the 2016 constitutional referendum (which would reduce the regions' powers—article 117, while expanding the powers that can be devolved to regions according to article 116 and creating a regionalised Senate), a notion deemed legally impossible by undersecretary Gianclaudio Bressa, and the negotiation started in May.

According to an opinion poll taken in June, 78.5% of Venetians would take part to the autonomy referendum, 78.4% would vote yes, 3.5% no and 18.1% did not know. According to the same poll, 70.7% of voters would participate also in the constitutional referendum, 41.3% would vote yes, 22.2% no and 36.5% did not know.

Contextually, two bills calling for an independence referendum were introduced in the Regional Council, one by Liga Veneta's Marino Finozzi, Gabriele Michieletto, Alessandro Montagnoli and Luciano Sandonà, with the support of Roberto Ciambetti (President of the Council), and the other by Antonio Guadagnini.

In April 2017 Zaia announced that the autonomy referendum would take place on 22 October, along with a similar referendum in Lombardy. 57.2% of Venetians participated in the referendum and 98.1% voted "yes". Consequently, President of Veneto Luca Zaia started a negotiation with the Italian government.

People and movements

Prominent Venetists have included Goffredo Parise, Franco Rocchetta (founder of Liga Veneta), Ettore Beggiato (who wrote a book titled ''1866: la grande truffa'', meaning "1866: the great swindle"), Sabino Acquaviva (who prefaced the book by Beggiato), Gian Paolo Gobbo, Fabrizio Comencini, Alessio Morosin, Fabio Padovan, Giorgio Lago, Flaminio De Poli, Giampaolo Borsetto, Ivone Cacciavillani, Manuela Dal Lago, Luca Zaia, Flavio Tosi, Giorgio Vido, Giorgio Panto, Lodovico Pizzati, Antonio Guadagnini, Patrik Riondato, Loris Palmerini, and, to some extent, Giancarlo Galan, Massimo Cacciari and Mario Rigoni Stern

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