ABSTRACT
The Lega Lombar da's leader, an iconoclastic ex-medical student called Umberto Bossi, would shortly become a national figure. In March 1982, Bossi formed the Lombard League, the Lega Autonoma Lombarda, attracting an oddball membership consisting mainly of devotees of Lombard dialect poetry and culture. Every year since 1989, the League's members have gathered at Pontida, the site of the original giuramento of the twenty city-states, to swear to liberate Lombardy from Roman oppression. The League's dramatic victory in the regional elections brought an unprecedented wave of publicity and analysis in its wake. Journalists and academics began looking at Bossi's movement with greater interest. Bossi was as aware as any of the League's critics, that it was not enough to voice the northern Italians' commonsense interpretation of their social contract with the Italian state. Mino Fuccillo's theme was that the election of Brescia was a "war bulletin" for Italian democracy.
