It has been three years since Matteo Salvini set foot in Sicily and issued an apology on behalf of the Northern League for years of abuse directed toward southern Italians by his once separatist party, which had long dismissed them as parasites dragging down the country.
It took riot police to protect him from the crowds in Palermo, who greeted him by throwing eggs and tomatoes on that visit in 2015. But when Italians head to the polls in national elections on Sunday, Salvini’s efforts to make amends in the south are likely to pay off.
Campaigning now as The League – La Lega – the party is expected to win 7% or more of the vote in the region. Such a result would have been unthinkable in the 1990s, when its then leader called for the creation of a mythical-sounding state in northern Italy called Padania.
Where southerners were once depicted as lazy plunderers of northern Italy’s riches, Salvini has instead cast migrants, asylum seekers and Roma gypsies as the enemy of his “Italians first” ideology. In Sicily, where resentment of EU guidelines is rife, he has homed in on two industries close to locals’ hearts – agriculture and fishing.
The message is beginning to resonate.
“I have embraced Salvini’s ideas. He apologised for the offences by the Lega against us Sicilians and now has become a bearer of our interests and our problems,” says Angelo Attaguile, a Lega candidate for the senate from Catania.
“They attacked us for supporting a party that had offended Sicilians, but now the people agree with us and we even managed to get a deputy in the regional government elected in the last elections.”
An entrepreneur and Lega supporter in Catania, Rocco Zapparrata, said it was the only party that supported products made in Italy. “Compared to all the other political leaders, Salvini has come among the people, talking to the people. Others do not,” he said.
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