San Candido is Italy — if only someone would tell the locals. Even before you arrive, past needle peaks and pine trees, you’ll notice the road signs: “Innichen” defiantly above, “S. Candido” almost a nickname below. Once you reach the centre, the houses are all Alpine shutters, and the villagers cry “Grüss Gott” (God bless) for hello. In the cafés, you can sip on schnapps, or gorge on strudels the size of your fist. Spend long enough here, where Italy nuzzles Austria, and even the cows seem to moo for Mitteleuropa.
Across the mountainous borderland of South Tyrol, their shepherds make similar sounds. In May, about 80 miles from Innichen, the town of Meran (Merano) decisively chose Katharina Johanna Zeller as its mayor. A member of the Südtiroler Volkspartei (SVP), she has long fought for closer links to Vienna, even rejecting the tricolour sash that accompanies her office. At the same time, the SVP is stalked by yet more radical forces: the Süd-Tiroler Freiheit (STF) backs the wholesale secession of South Tyrol from Italy, and longs to see the region reunited with Austria.
Soaring in the polls, the STF picked up 30 councillors in the recent vote. And as that word “reunited” implies, the party has history on its side. For centuries until 1918, South Tyrol was part of Austria, and if that explains the Teutonic mood in towns like Innichen, the STF is roused by more recent tensions too. From Mussolini and his thugs to postwar paramilitaries, this is a place where history blooms like edelweiss in spring. That could have profound consequences for Italy itself, yet what happens here is anything but parochial. Right across Europe, other “small nationalisms” are rising too, a phenomenon that could dovetail past and present to shred the continent’s established frontiers.
One tenth of Italy’s fighting men died in the First World War. But if their sacrifice helped secure what jingoistic statesmen called the country’s “unredeemed” lands — that still left the people who lived there. And here, South Tyrol posed problems that couldn’t be solved by treaty. From 1363, the region was under Habsburg protection; united with so-called North Tyrol, it was as Austrian as Innsbruck. The last prewar census made that clear: 89% of South Tyrolians spoke German at home. That made a clash with nationalist Italy inevitable, especially after Mussolini’s putsch in 1922.
Fascism soon stomped German from Tyrolean life. That began with the physical landscape, as street names were changed and public inscriptions tweaked to praise Italian luminaries like Dante and Verdi. In the regional centre of Bozen (Bolzano), the Fascists built a vast marble “Victory Monument” to their conquests. Twenty metres high, this Roman pastiche cast Mussolini as Caesar with a paunch. If that wasn’t stark enough, there was also the arch’s Latin inscription. “Here at the border of the fatherland set down the banner,” it barked. “From this point on we educated the others with language, law and culture.” And so it proved: German was purged from courts and schools and newspapers, while Rome arranged mass migration from the south.
Mussolini’s death freed South Tyrol from the worst Italian chauvinism. But just as the Victory Monument still squats near Bozen’s old town, unhappiness has lingered. When my family came, to hike and ski in the Sixties, some older folk were loath to answer questions in Italian. Younger activists were more direct. Beyond several failed attacks on the Victory Monument, in 1961 Tyrolean terrorists blew up electricity pylons near Bozen. And in 1967, on a lonely peak near Innichen, they killed a soldier and three military policemen.
The vast majority of South Tyrolians reject bloodshed. But as the popularity of the SVP and STF implies, the valleys still shimmer with discontent. To an extent, the secessionist impulse can be understood financially. South Tyrol is one of Italy’s richest regions, its GDP growth among the fastest in the country. Especially as the national economy stagnates, some here fear migrants from poorer regions. Yet it’s revealing that even this humdrum bickering is framed by looking backwards, with the STF complaining that migrants know nothing of Tyrolean “history, language, or culture”. The party’s leader has spoken in related terms, describing Italian annexation as a “mistake of history”.
Not that the STF are mere nostalgics. On the contrary, their policies are hard-nosed attempts to right the wrongs of the 20th century. That ultimately means secession, something informal polls suggest is backed by the majority of South Tyrolean Germans. For the moment, though, the party hopes to ban Italian from schools, reversing a trend that’s seen native German speakers fall to 58% of South Tyrol’s population. Hospitals are another target. One STF poster shows a pair of feet on a morgue slab, its caption warning that the “doctor didn’t know German”. This nastier tinge sometimes escapes the realm of propaganda. In January, at a student event in Brixen (Bressanone), an Italian teenager was badly beaten by a group shouting “Dreckwalscher” (“dirty Italian”).
But though Rome indulges South Tyrol, with 90% of its tax revenues staying local, outright secession is anathema. Italian politicians are doubly sensitive given how often their sovereignty has been challenged, whether by Sardinian terrorists or the Venetian separatists who invaded St Mark’s Square in a homespun tank. Yet if that’s led Giorgia Meloni to warn that South Tyrol must work for Italians too, and emphasise that the region is indisputably Italian, what’s most striking is just how common these controversies are, and far beyond the Dolomites too.
According to one recent estimate, around 100 regionalist movements exist in Europe today. But even that doesn’t do justice to their bewildering range. There are gentle autonomists and hardline secessionists — and some, like the Polish Silesians, who wallow tipsily between the two. Some activists, notably Occitan speakers in southern France, put a premium on their distinct linguistic heritage. In Andalusia (Spain) and Masuria (Poland), campaigners care more about cultural solidarity; Belgium’s Walloons and Finland’s Sámi tend to straddle both. That’s before you recall the old ideological splits. There are Galician Marxists, and Cornish progressives, and pot-bellied Saxon monarchists. As in South Tyrol, meanwhile, movements face internal splits. The Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) both defend ethnic Serbs in Bosnia. But if the SDS is increasingly pro-European, the SNSD’s leader sees Putin as a friend.
Combined with their varied tolerance for violence — there are plenty of Corsican nationalists, but only a few willing to bomb the second homes of French tourists — and Europe’s secessionists become a discordant political chorus, each howling in the hope that the public will listen. In many cases, of course, voters are more likely to reach for the mufflers. Though nationalists in Catalonia and Scotland still enjoy plenty of support, other causes are marginal at best. Who really imagines the Isle of Man will soon secure its freedom? Who, perhaps even campaigners themselves, truly envisages autonomy for Frisia, or believes that Gozo can throw off the Maltese yoke?
“Europe’s secessionists are a discordant political chorus”
Considering, too, that Edinburgh and Barcelona both failed in their respective bids for freedom, it’s tempting to think that Europe’s political map will never be redrawn. That would be a mistake. As the STF so vividly shows, the past is like a teenage breakup: easy to resent, easier to exaggerate, and impossible to forget. The examples here are almost literally endless, as Scots conjure the Highland Clearances, and Bretons the depredations of Jacobinism. There are more positive examples too. Catalonia recalls its 13th-century law code; Flanders a 1302 victory against the French. The point here is that the historical tradition, the written word, really matters. Boasting a tradition of literacy stretching back generations — South Tyroleans still admire their medieval troubadours — even the most microscopic of European nationalisms can find something to cling to. In this, they differ from many other parts of the world, which through illiteracy or colonialism or conquest have far fewer sources to draw on.
Even so, it’d be wrong to suggest that Europe’s small nationalisms can be understood from the chronicles alone. In the decade since Alex Salmond’s doomed referendum, the continent has been transformed, battered by war, and pandemic, and the growing realisation that welfarism is a transient gift. Then there’s immigration — 12 million new arrivals from in the five years to 2020 — with voters ever-more frantic for the numbers to fall. That offers regionalists space: not only can they rail against the creaking establishment, just like populists everywhere, their policies also come with the added pique of independence. As the STF puts it: “As long as Italy determines which and how many foreigners come to South Tyrol, we have no control.”
Others are even more explicit. As the leader of Vlaams Belang said in 2023, his Flemish separatist party exists because “Belgium is not working”. The Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), also angling for a free Flanders, has backed “the strictest migration policy yet” — among other things allowing the authorities to check the phones of asylum seekers. In February, the N-VA’s former leader became Belgium’s prime minister, the first Flemish nationalist to do so. Nor is any of this very surprising: many regionalist parties are past masters at evoking the spectre of cultural dilution, whether from far-off parliaments or foreign migrants.
There are broader trends here, too, with small nationalists helped by the supranational nature of the European Union. Though it allows member states to wield their authority against would-be secessionists — as Catalan leaders have learnt to their cost — the bloc is congenitally allergic to sovereign borders. And if that means warm support for minority languages, from Breton exchange schemes to Romani textbooks, the EU’s governance model also prompts secessionist dreams. If tiny Luxembourg can grab a seat at the table, why not Bavaria or the Basque Country? These forces doubtless explain the enduring popularity of EU flags at SNP rallies, with Brussels becoming a sort of proxy nationalism until genuine independence can finally arrive.
Equally important is how these small nationalisms interact with their neighbours. Much has been said about the rise of Europe’s populist Right. But these “large nationalist” movements can also encourage secessionist forces beyond their frontiers, especially if the latter long to be reunited with linguistic or ethnic kin. In 2018, Austria’s populist government proposed offering citizenship to native German speakers in South Tyrol, a sop to the STF and indeed Austrians themselves, given as many as nine-in-ten back reunification.
It’s a similar story elsewhere in the former Austria-Hungary, as Viktor Orbán spends millions on football teams and social clubs for ethnic Magyars in Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine. Given many of these people are actually Hungarian citizens — and the vast majority of the country’s diaspora vote for Orbán’s Fidesz Party — it’s a worthwhile investment. Not that the flames are fanned merely by secessionists and their backers. Though it was later shelved, Austria’s passport stunt inevitably enraged Italian nationalists like Meloni. Ready to mount the “barricades” for South Tyrol she may have been, but such facile grandstanding only gifts the STF more exposure.
It’s easy to forget, though, that Europe’s frontiers are never really settled, even if their familiarity lulls politicians and publics into a kind of geopolitical coma. Who, in 1880, could have predicted the resurrection of Poland after a century of oppression, or that far-flung Austrian hamlets would now be ruled from Rome? Who, in 1980, could have foreseen the fall of Yugoslavia, or that the independent Baltics would soon join Nato? Serbs and Latvians, too, were once secessionists of a sort. And if the First World War and collapse of the Soviet Union offered ample opportunities for borders to shift, the signs are ominous today. Kosovo gained its independence as late as 2008, and you could argue that the Ukraine war was sparked by separatists in the Donbas.
It’s impossible, of course, to know exactly how our maps will move by 2080. But combined with a desperate, mutinous population, and a growing sense that Europe could yet stumble into turmoil, it would be foolish to bet against another upheaval.
