San Candido is Italy \u2014 if only someone would tell the locals. Even before you arrive, past needle peaks and pine trees, you\u2019ll notice the road signs: \u201cInnichen\u201d defiantly above, \u201cS. Candido\u201d almost a nickname below. Once you reach the centre, the houses are all Alpine shutters, and the villagers cry \u201cGr\u00fcss Gott\u201d (God bless) for hello. In the caf\u00e9s, 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.<\/p>\n
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 S\u00fcdtiroler Volkspartei (SVP), she has long fought for closer links to Vienna, even rejecting<\/a> the tricolour sash that accompanies her office. At the same time, the SVP is stalked by yet more radical forces: the S\u00fcd-Tiroler Freiheit (STF) backs the wholesale secession of South Tyrol from Italy, and longs to see the region reunited with Austria.<\/p>\n Soaring in the polls, the STF picked up<\/a> 30 councillors in the recent vote. And as that word \u201creunited\u201d 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 \u201csmall nationalisms\u201d are rising too, a phenomenon that could dovetail past and present to shred the continent\u2019s established frontiers.<\/p>\n One tenth of Italy\u2019s fighting men died in the First World War. But if their sacrifice helped secure what jingoistic statesmen called the country\u2019s \u201cunredeemed\u201d lands \u2014 that still left the people who lived there. And here, South Tyrol posed problems that couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s putsch in 1922.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cVictory Monument\u201d to their conquests. Twenty metres high, this Roman pastiche cast Mussolini as Caesar with a paunch. If that wasn\u2019t stark enough, there was also the arch\u2019s Latin inscription. \u201cHere at the border of the fatherland set down the banner,\u201d it barked. \u201cFrom this point on we educated the others with language, law and culture.\u201d And so it proved: German was purged from courts and schools and newspapers, while Rome arranged mass migration from the south.<\/p>\n Mussolini\u2019s death freed South Tyrol from the worst Italian chauvinism. But just as the Victory Monument still squats near Bozen\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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\u2019s revealing that even this humdrum bickering is framed by looking backwards, with the STF complaining<\/a> that migrants know nothing of Tyrolean \u201chistory, language, or culture\u201d. The party\u2019s leader has spoken in related terms, describing<\/a> Italian annexation as a \u201cmistake of history\u201d.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s seen native German speakers fall to 58% of South Tyrol\u2019s population. Hospitals are another target. One STF poster shows a pair of feet on a morgue slab, its caption warning that the \u201cdoctor didn\u2019t know German\u201d. 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 \u201cDreckwalscher\u201d (\u201cdirty Italian\u201d).<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Square in a homespun<\/a> tank. Yet if that\u2019s led Giorgia Meloni to warn that South Tyrol must work for Italians too, and emphasise that the region is indisputably<\/a> Italian, what\u2019s most striking is just how common these controversies are, and far beyond the Dolomites too.<\/p>\n According to one recent estimate, around 100 regionalist movements<\/a> exist in Europe today. But even that doesn\u2019t do justice to their bewildering range. There are gentle autonomists and hardline secessionists \u2014 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\u2019s Walloons and Finland\u2019s S\u00e1mi tend to straddle both. That\u2019s 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\u2019s leader sees Putin as a friend.<\/p>\n Combined with their varied tolerance for violence \u2014 there are plenty of Corsican nationalists, but only a few<\/a> willing to bomb the second homes of French tourists \u2014 and Europe\u2019s 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<\/a> its freedom? Who, perhaps even campaigners themselves, truly envisages autonomy for Frisia, or believes that Gozo can throw off the Maltese yoke?<\/p>\n \u201cEurope\u2019s secessionists are a discordant political chorus\u201d<\/p>\n Considering, too, that Edinburgh and Barcelona both failed in their respective bids for freedom, it\u2019s tempting to think that Europe\u2019s 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 \u2014 South Tyroleans still admire their medieval troubadours \u2014 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.<\/p>\n Even so, it\u2019d be wrong to suggest that Europe\u2019s small nationalisms can be understood from the chronicles alone. In the decade since Alex Salmond\u2019s doomed referendum, the continent has been transformed, battered by war, and pandemic, and the growing realisation that welfarism is a transient gift. Then there\u2019s immigration \u2014 12 million new arrivals from in the five years to 2020 \u2014 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<\/a> it: \u201cAs long as Italy determines which and how many foreigners come to South Tyrol, we have no control.\u201d<\/p>\n Others are even more explicit. As the leader of Vlaams Belang said<\/a> in 2023, his Flemish separatist party exists because \u201cBelgium is not working\u201d. The Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), also angling<\/a> for a free Flanders, has backed \u201cthe strictest migration policy yet\u201d \u2014 among other things allowing the authorities<\/a> to check the phones of asylum seekers. In February, the N-VA\u2019s former leader became Belgium\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 as Catalan leaders have learnt<\/a> to their cost \u2014 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n