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

ABSTRACT. 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.