Thanks mostly to air travel, it’s not unusual to meet a Brazilian, or a Pakistani or even a Canadian. You may have even met a Padanian. But you won’t find Padania on a map, in an atlas, or in the United Nations. That’s because it’s the name of a nation that doesn’t exist, but people really live there.
In northern Italy there’s a river called the Po, set in the middle of a large, shallow valley called, somewhat obviously, the Po Valley. It’s part of Italy now, but during the Napoleonic era you would have found the Cispadane Republic and the Transpadane Republic there. Notice the “padane” in those names? They come from “Padus,” which is the Latin name of the Po.
In 1975, the president of Emilia-Romagna (an administrative region of Italy) suggested that his region merge with the neighboring regions Veneto, Lombardy, Piedmont, and Liguria. He suggested that the newly formed set area ought to be one single “macroregion” inside Italy (he thought Italy should have three of these macroregions), and suggested the name “Padania.”
The idea sat around being discussed occasionally until 1991, when the Lega Nord party started talking up a new country called Padania. It would secede from Italy — or at least be much more autonomous — and they created a flag and a national anthem, those being, obviously, the two most important factors determining whether what you have is a country or not.
In 1997 they created their own parliament and held elections, even though the whole thing was unofficial. Evidently there is still a serious movement to establish Padania as an independent state in the European Union. So even if you’ve already met a Padanian, at some point you might be able to meet an official one — with their own national anthem, even.
