Landscapes as a symbol of nationhood: the Alps in the rhetoric of the Lega Nord

While the dominant discourse of the Lega Nord, the party that
proposes the independence of 'Padania', i.e. northern Italy, emphasises the region's
economic success, contributions in the party literature on the Padanian landscape
focus on the Alps. The Alps symbolise both the rootedness of the nation in tradition
and ethnic identity and the intrinsic link between these traditions and modernity. They
embody self-government of mountain communities and local traditions of political
autonomy, but also appear as a protective bulwark against invasions of the Padanian
lowlands. The focus on the Alps, an economically peripheral territory, is symptomatic
of the reluctance to represent the environmental degradation caused by development in
the lowlands. Contributions on the Alps, however, also reveal the tension between
modernisation and the preservation of culture and territory and the need for new
development models. Discussions on the Alps thus reveal the contradictions in the
party's construction of a national identity based on modernity rooted in tradition.