‘Sardines’ pack out the piazzas to halt Salvini
On a chilly night in Ravenna, a town in northern Italy renowned for its Byzantine mosaics, Matteo Salvini was warming up the crowd like a late-night comedian. As the leader of the Italian opposition paced the stage with a microphone in his hand, a woman piped up and suggested he might like a panino with Nutella to ward off the cold.
He didn’t miss a beat, explaining he no longer indulged in the sticky chocolate spread. “And you know why, Signora? Because I found out Nutella uses Turkish nuts. I prefer to help companies that use Italian products. I prefer to eat Italian and help Italian farmers because they need help.”
Having been booted out of government as deputy prime minister and interior minister when his coalition with the Five Star Movement imploded in the summer, the hardRight populist Mr Salvini is back on a war footing. He has a juicy prize in his sights – control of the prosperous northern region of Emilia-Romagna, of which Ravenna is a part.
Famous for its Parma ham, Parmigiano cheese and Mortadella sausage, it has been in the hands of Left-wing parties for decades. If the League can win there, they can win practically anywhere, strengthening their bid for an eventual return to power at national level.
But Mr Salvini and his followers now face a stiff challenge from an upstart movement calling themselves the Sardines. The moniker comes from their claim that whenever they gather in piazzas up and down the country to protest, they are so numerous that they are packed in like sardines.
The Left-leaning movement emerged from nowhere late last month, conceived by four young people from Bologna. Since then it has exploded in popularity, with rallies held in dozens of towns and cities.
The Sardines are opposed to the hard-Right brand of populist nationalism and anti-immigrant rhetoric espoused by The League.
Mattia Santori, 32, one of the founders, said: “This is a spontaneous movement. Our aim is to stop Italy’s drift towards populism. The election in Emilia-Romagna will be an important political test.” Last Saturday, the Sardines came to Rome, with thousands gathering in a huge piazza in front of the Basilica of St John Lateran, holding cut-out cardboard sardines on poles. Some had stuffed cloth sardines strapped to their heads.
“We’re here to say we’re tired of the culture of hatred encouraged by the League,’ said Luigina Basilici, 57, a teacher. “This is not the true Italy. We are a welcoming country.”
Emanuela Leone, 55, a pastry chef, said she was horrified by the prospect of the League returning to power. “We would not accept that. Let’s hope Italians are not that stupid.”
For all their energy and enthusiasm, the Sardines have no plans as yet to form themselves into a political party – their mission appears to be wellmeaning but vague. Alarmingly, a recent survey found that nearly half of Italians would like to have in power a “strongman”, unconstrained by parliament and democracy.
Mr Salvini remains hugely popular, with the League polling more than 30 per cent of the national vote, making it the country’s biggest party.
His nationalist, nativist message has struck a chord at a time when the economy is in the doldrums – again – and after years of uncontrolled irregular migration from the coast of Libya, when hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean.
Mr Salvini’s decision to close Italy’s ports to asylum seekers went down well with many Italians, as did his much-repeated mantra of “la pacchia e finita” – the gravy train is over.
But he is one of the most divisive figures in Italian politics. Italy is engaged in a culture war over traditions, values and moral codes. Multiculturalism and diversity are the battlegrounds, with a sharp divergence of opinion over everything from migrants to religious symbols.
In October, conservatives kicked up a stink in Bologna after an archbishop suggested that the city’s famous tortellini pasta, traditionally made from pork, should be filled with chicken as a gesture towards Muslim immigrants.
Matteo Zuppa, the city’s archbishop, said the adaptation of a regional classic, which was to be served at a festival in honour of Bologna’s patron saint, would encourage integration and signal a welcome to people of different faiths and roots. Mr Salvini was scathing. “If an Italian went to an Arab country and tried to teach them how to eat, drink and pray, how would they react?” the League leader wrote on Facebook.
“Denying our history in the name of a mistaken idea of ‘respect’ is simply madness.”
Erik Jones, director of European and Eurasian studies at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, said: “Salvini is tapping into something that Italy has been wrestling with since about the year 2000 – that’s when Italians woke up to the fact that their country had become a net recipient, rather than exporter, of migrants.”
The League, along with the far-Right Brothers of Italy party and Casapound, a neo-fascist movement, are exploiting the shifting demography of Italy “with differing degrees of nastiness,” he said. “Up in the north they even tried to deny migrant kids access to school lunches. It’s really nasty stuff,” said Prof Jones.
Meanwhile, the governing coalition is looking ever more fragile. The centre-Left Democratic Party and the populist Five Star Movement squabble on an almost daily basis on a raft of issues, from the threatened closure of a massive steel plant in the south to the woeful state of Alitalia, the national carrier, and the drawing up of the 2020 budget.
The coalition marked 100 days in office on Friday, but there was little to celebrate.
“The Democratic Party and Five Star have failed to strike a chord with the electorate. Five Star has tumbled to 16 per cent – half of its original size – and continues to suffer,” said Wolfango Piccoli, the head of a political risk consultancy, Teneo. Unless those challenges can be addressed, “Italy will be left with Salvini primed for a return to power whenever parliamentary elections are held next.”
The League would most likely seek to bolster its position by forging an alliance with the far-Right Brothers of Italy party, which is polling 10 per cent of the vote.
A win for Mr Salvini in EmiliaRomagna is by no means assured. Polls released on Friday show that the incumbent governor, from the centre-Left, can expect to win 45-49 per cent of the vote, while the League’s candidate is polling 41-45 per cent.
“It will be a really big deal if they win,” said Prof Jones. “Chances of another national election are already high. They become even more so if Emilia-Romagna falls to the League.”
‘We’re here to say we’re tired of the culture of hatred encouraged by the League. This is not the true Italy. We are a welcoming country’