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Padania's flag, the Sun of the Alps, proposed by the Northern League
Padania is an alternative name for Northern Italy. Its usage has today strong political implications, and is associated with the Northern League, an Italian political party.
Territory
In the narrowest sense, Padania refers to the valley of the River Po (In Latin, Padus). The term was however used sparingly if at all, since pianura Padana or "val Padana" was preferred in most geography textbooks and in atlases. In this sense, the word "Padania" was created by the influential journalist Gianni Brera, and was used as a matter of course by Indro Montanelli in his books.
When the Northern League decided to push for secession of richer Northern Italy from the rest of the country, the League's leader Umberto Bossi gave the region the name Padania. The new "country" had a flag, a national anthem, a "parliament" in Mantua, and held elections (recognized by no one except the Northern League). "La Padania" is also the name of the Northern League's party newspaper (La Padania),
The boundaries of Padania, in this political meaning, include all the regions North of the Appennines plus Liguria, Tuscany, Umbria and Marche. While nobody disputes that Italy comprises different and well-individualized sections, whether or not one should be called Padania and should comprise exactly those regions is a controversial, politically-tainted issue. Whereas most League supporters would expect Padania to include Emilia-Romagna and possibly Tuscany, these regions have a long history of support for left-wing parties, and the League has but a negligible presence there. In fact, the Northern League has its strongest electoral base in Lombardy (especially Bossi's native Varese province, where the League began), and in Veneto. Outside of the world of Italian politics, however, sociologists at the University of Newcastle, in Britain, found that the "border" between Padania and the rest of Italy does correspond to a boundary in the population's attitudes on civic issues, and linked the difference to the emergence of the free communes after the first millennium AD, which only took place in Northern and Central Italy (today's Padania in the Northern League's definition). The researchers were not concerned with the political significance of the boundary they found --they were possibly unaware of it. By contrast linguists have seen no reason, so far, to group Padania's regions together.
Previous Existence of the Name
The term Padania was in use in Italy as a geographical definition for the area North of the Appenines, with Appenninia for the area in the South. Nevertheless it was so rare that many people (including Northern Italians) had never heard it and assumed it was made up by the Northern League. The term padano ("Padanian"), previously a neutral adjective for things connected to the river Po, is often used today to indicate people or issues close to the Northern League. A Google search for Padania indicates that most referenced pages are associated with the Northern League in one way or another. But in the 1980s, Nobel prizewinner Dario Fo (a leftist) wrote a play called "Johan Padan e la descuverta de l'America" (Johan Padan and the discovery of America), which was turned into a cartoon movie in 2002.
Languages of Padania
The local languages vary a good deal over the territory. Without any doubt vernaculars in Tuscany, Umbria and Marche are regional variations of Standard Italian, with the Umbrian dialect being closely related to dialects from regions that no one counts as part of Padania. French, Franco-provençal, Occitan, German, Friulian, Ladin and Slovenian are spoken on the borders of the country and officially recognised by the State as minority languages. The status of vernaculars in the remaining areas, spoken by a great majority, is strongly disputed. They aren't officially recognised by the State and are tipically seen as variations of Standard Italian also by theirs speakers. Nevertheless most scholars outside Italy have a different opinion and Ethnologue enlists Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian, Lombard, Piedmontese and Venetian as autonomous languages in a Gallo-Italian subgroup of Gallo-Romance. Despite the fact that now there is no unity among them, historical records attests that a lingua franca was in development in XIV century, but was exceeded by the quest for a unified Italian language. Nobel Prize's winning playwright Dario Fo (a leftist and by no means a Northern League supporter) reinvented this ancient quasi-language as a grammelot for his Mistero Buffo play.
National Anthem
Many have mocked the Northern League for choosing the "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves" from Verdi's Nabucco, Va' pensiero, which was originally written as a song for Italian unification, whereas the League's objective is exactly the opposite.
Popular Support
The Northern League currently controls only 2 of over 100 Italian provinces, namely Sondrio in Lombardy and Treviso in Veneto. In 2004 European Parliament Election they scored only 10% of total popular votes in Northern Italy. By that, if a referendum for the independence of Padania (in any of its likely geographic configurations) were to be held, it would be voted down.
Computer virus
A file-infecting computer virus from 1999 also bears the name Padania, and carries a pro-Padania message in its code. An earlier, significantly less important, MS-DOS computer virus is also named Padania.