"Me, Bossi, and that time the Cav settled a dispute between us," Raffaele Lombardo recounts the "his" Senatur

The tank top, Raffaele Lombardo, has never worn it, not even on scorching days while driving the tractor in his fields in Ramacca. Yet with Umberto Bossi - "a true leader, a born fighter" - he shared a certain feeling. More anthropological than political. So distant, the Senatùr who dreamed of an independent Padania and the founder of the Mpa who would have been satisfied with a truly autonomous Sicily, and yet so close; united, despite coming from opposite latitudes, by the challenge to Roman centralism and then both forced to come to terms with "Roma Ladrona".

"I first met Bossi in 2003, when I was still the secretary of the Udc. I was curious about that League so combative on the northern issue, I wanted to understand more about it." He - Lombardo recalls in an interview with La Sicilia - remembers him as a very direct person: he got straight to the point, his meetings lasted no more than twenty minutes." And then he adds "suspicious" as an adjective: "He felt almost uncomfortable in front of a stranger, someone who didn't belong to his world. He didn't trust those he didn't know well." This, said by the former governor - known for the habit of making others taste the water before drinking it himself, for fear of being poisoned - also becomes a compliment.

Two suspicions that intersect, "without getting too intimate," for mutual political convenience. The Movimento per l’Autonomia had already been born, a swing factor for the overturning of the municipal elections in Catania later won by Umberto Scapagnini over the heavily favored Enzo Bianco, and "Cupid" was set in motion between Bossi and Lombardo: Silvio Berlusconi. "The electoral law had just changed, with the raising of the threshold, the League was also at risk. And so the Knight pushed: you must be on the same list together."

Lombardo, always a skillful poker player at multiple tables, was also courted by the center-left: thanks to the good offices of Massimo D’Alema, guest of honor at the founding congress of the Mpa in Bari in December 2005, he went to negotiate directly with Romano Prodi. "I met him twice: once at his home in Bologna and then in Rome, on Via della Mercede. I asked him two things in the program: favorable taxation and the Bridge. He said no to both: he was against the first "as an economist," and on the second, he didn't want to hurt the sensitivities of the Greens".

And so the paths of Lombardo and Bossi finally meet. In Arcore, of course. "Berlusconi proposed a technical pact, without the pretense of merging ideas and projects." In short, the League gathered votes in the North and the Mpa in the South; then each returned home. But there was the issue of the common symbol on the ballot. "Bossi insisted that there be a huge Alberto da Giussano, with our autonomist dove tiny and squashed in a corner," recalls the former governor with a nearly nostalgic smile. The solution, "after a quarrel between me and Umberto, millimeter by millimeter," was found (and imposed) by the host, who had the new logo designed. In the end, however, there was a solemn handshake. "We Lega members are loyal people," the Senatùr told Don Raffaele. "Our slogan, "a taxi for Rome", worked: we surpassed the threshold together with the Carroccio with some of our candidates elected," Lombardo recalls, admitting that "Bossi then recognized our share of public funding, then due to the parties present in parliament, down to the last cent. They accused us of being funded by the League, but it was just the respect of a pact."

And it is always Berlusconi who keeps the polentone from Gemonio and the terrone from Grammichele united, on the eve of the 2008 Political Elections. We are at the peak of Lombardo's trajectory, who will be elected president of the Region while his movement expands above the Strait. "The Knight, who in the meantime had formed the Pdl, called us back to Arcore. The strategy had changed: League lists in the North, us with our symbol and the writing "Allies for the South" from Rome down." Bossi and Lombardo no longer separated at home, but distinct although not distant. But the leader of the League had to swallow a Sicilian toad: "He didn't want Berlusconi to include the Bridge in the center-right program, but he didn't listen to him. And indeed, when he was in government, he signed, one after another, 56,000 pages of agreement with Ciucci for the start of the work."

Politics, but also ordinary humanity. Lombardo, who is certainly not one for romantic mush, recalls the "great tenderness" in seeing the Padano ally, champion of celodurismo, after the stroke and subsequent illness "cared for by Senator Rosi Mauro". Bossi, who before radiated "hardness and determination" while "speaking with his only in dialect, with a hoarse and imperative voice," had become "a leader with a fragility that made him more human." Lombardo, meanwhile the emperor-governor of Sicily, broke the front of the Southern Regions in the hands of the center-left. The feeling grew with Minister Roberto Calderoli (who attested to the autonomist battles "on favorable taxation and equalization in infrastructure") but also the esteem of the same League leader.

"Once he told me: "The Sicilian is not a dialect, but a language. You need to make a law for us". But the most memorable (unsolicited, because Lombardo is not one to ask for advice) advice was another. "Raffaele, our battles are similar - Bossi acknowledged in a conversation - and we cannot win them inside the Palaces: we need to move the people, bring them into the squares".

The exact opposite of the "Lega much more Roman and salon-like" of Matteo Salvini, with whom the Mpa was federated before being "evicted" by Luca Sammartino. "Everything has changed", sighs Lombardo. Who perhaps today misses Bossi, an ally "blunt, quick, and at times gruff", but also "coherent and deeply loyal". And not just him.