The more I deepen the topic of regions (I'm in Milan for this reason), and the more I am dismayed by having to write about it. Little is needed to understand that what these Lombard regionalists are pursuing, knowingly or unknowingly, is a Cisalpine secessionist plan. And, once they've had the instrument, they'll manage to realize it. It isn't for no reason that Bassetti speaks already no longer of "Lombardy region", but of "Padania region", of which the rest of Italy would be but an appendix. If they'll succeed (and they will succeed), farewell Risorgimento! It wasn't but a fiction, agreed, and in practice it has failed. But with what will we replace it?

Diari 1957-78, ed. Rizzoli, 26 September 1972.