Ballots and T-shirts everywhere reproduce a sepia poster like those in Western movies, the “wanted” ones, with the face of Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League. In capital letters: “Guilty.” And below: “Having defended Italy.” Salvini, portrayed as a lone ranger and vigilante victim of injustice, has this Sunday focused on himself the historic annual party of the party in Pontida, half an hour from Bergamo, now in its 36th edition, which he has turned into an act of support for his person. The motto on stage was: “It is not a crime to defend the borders.”
The sentence is approaching, starting on October 18, in the trial where the Prosecutor’s Office asks him for six years in prison for having prevented the disembarkation of 147 immigrants from the Spanish ship in 2019, when he was Minister of the Interior. Open Arms. But Salvini, who in 10 years has been transforming the party towards extreme populism, has turned Pontida into something more: a party of the international far-right.
The annual Pontida event, which has been held since 1990, has already completely changed. It was a popular pilgrimage of polenta and sausages that was born to exhibit the Lombard, Venetian and northern identity against “thief Rome”, a Nibelungan thing with Viking costumes and folklore of Celtic mythology, all the paraphernalia that the founder of the League invented. North, Umberto Bossi, to show that they were not Italian. But in addition to the fact that the League – which removed the word “North” from its name in 2017 – has gone from being secessionist to defending the Italian borders to the last consequences, this Sunday has been a true celebration of the international ultra. With only one enemy declared by all, mentioned insistently in each speech, the same one that Salvini has faced and that is why he has ended up on the bench: immigration, identified in many of the speeches with “Islamic radicalism.”
All European far-right parties have responded to his call to give him their support. On a date precisely chosen and remembered several times: the eve of the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, when a Christian coalition defeated the Turkish empire on October 7, 1571. Salvini, who cited the “good God” several times in his speech , ended up praising “the Holy Alliance of the European peoples that is born today in Pontida.” A large Russian flag even appeared in the audience. All this next to the town where John XXIII, the good dadone of the least bellicose that has ever existed.
The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, has been present and each has intervened; the Dutchman Geert Wilders; the vice president of the Austrian party FPÖ, Marlene Svazek; the leader of the Portuguese Chega, André Ventura, and other representatives of European populism, also from Vox, which has sent its national spokesperson, José Antonio Fúster. Frenchman Jordan Bardella and Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro sent video messages.
The response from the League base? It was evident that there were fewer people than other years, large spaces in the famous meadow, “sacred ground” for the party, around 5,000 people. Because both Salvini’s leadership, to whom the trial has actually given an unexpected opportunity to vindicate himself, and the League, are in crisis: in the 2019 European elections he obtained 34% of the votes, and in this year’s elections, 8.9%.
Salvini competes with Giorgia Meloni for the space of the extreme right and is losing, and among the crowd has triumphed in Pontida, taking selfies, the independent candidate of the League for the European elections, General Roberto Vanacci, loquacious and vehement, who is contemplating forming his own party.
Moderate attendance and enthusiasm
So there was moderate attendance and enthusiasm. But of course the public responded effusively to the leadership of the European extreme right. The “people of common sense” of the League – this was one of the mottos of the party – hugged them and applauded them as if they were from their party. “Orbán, Orbán!” the crowd shouted before the Hungarian leader, the most excited by far. Although he did not smile even once in 20 minutes of intervention. He boasted of having “zero immigrants” and charged against the EU: “We must not leave Brussels, we are going to enter with force, we are going to occupy it and take it away from the bureaucrats and give it to the Europeans!”
In this penultimate reinvention of the League, the battle of Lepanto finally represents an at least real historical reference. Until now, it has been fueled by legends. Its symbol continues to be a medieval warrior who did not exist, Alberto da Giussano, and it commemorates in Pontida an event with no proven historical basis, the supposed oath in the 12th century of local leaders to unite against Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa.
We must also consider the talent for the transformation of a party that was born as anti-system and that at 40 years old is already the oldest in Italy. A formation whose motto was “Rome a thief” and that after fraud in electoral reimbursement (49 million that, among other things, went to buy diamonds in Tanzania) must return what was stolen to the Italian State, in annual installments, for 80 years. But that party resists and continues to have a faithful core. The one seen in Pontida, the upper middle ages, merchants, small businessmen, who represent the unrest of the north, the fear of the provincial bourgeoisie, in wealthy cities, of globalization, of decline, of the immigrant, with the satiety of the taxes and bureaucracy of a still very centralized country.
The central and essential battle of the League has been decentralization, and it has just approved a law called “differentiated autonomy” to transfer powers, which is still slow to be applied. That is their fight for this legislature, acknowledged its architect, Minister Roberto Calderoli, and for the next one, he said, “fiscal federalism.”
In the nineties, Bossi always distanced himself from Le Pen’s party, calling it racist and fascist, when they wanted to align him on the same side. But Bossi no longer even votes for his own party (he said so in the last European elections) and Marine Le Pen was the first foreign leader to attend Pontida’s party last year. This Sunday has already been a landing. The militants admit that the party has been changing, and they see no problem, and they certainly deny being fascists. “Fascists? We are tired of fascists, of anti-fascists, 90% of people have not known fascism, they have not lived it and they do not know what it is. We are tired of them using these words only to attack those who are on the right. The right wants to defend the people who produce, who respect the rules, order and discipline,” says Livio Ghideli, 58, from Viganò, a Lombard town. A member for 38 years, he has been coming to Pontida since 1991. And Orbán and the others are fascists? “They will always use phrases to accuse them of this, the most absurd details, but fascists no longer exist. “On immigration we are in perfect agreement with everyone.”
Anna Maria Cappelleto, 70, and Claudio Pugno, 66, fly the Venetian flag of the lion of Saint Mark. They come from Scorzé and confess to the old guard: “Yes, everything changes. We have seen everything change, including the Pope, for example, who before was different and now anything goes. And therefore, the League also changes, but always for the good of the League.” Those who call them fascists say, “they are idiots, they don’t know what fascism is.” “Orbán is not either, whoever is attentive to his country and its citizens is not a fascist. Communism and fascism are two extremes that no longer work, they no longer have meaning. We have our homeland, I specifically Veneto, and we have no party ideology, right or left, only the concept of being free people in their own State,” explains Pugno.
Regarding Salvini’s process, they believe it is “a shame.” “What has he done? He hasn’t killed anyone, he hasn’t kidnapped anyone. Those people were on the boat, with bed and food, without problems. Defending borders is an absolute right.”
One of the last to still dress up in Pontida is Narciso Checco, 73 years old, from Franciacorta, province of Brescia, who has dyed his beard green for the occasion: “Every year I come like this.” “We are not fascists, the fascist party no longer exists. We have some ideas like Mussolini, but we cannot apply them like he did. You see that Salvini is now prosecuted.”