The video of Bossi's funeral, from the applause for the Senatùr to the protests against Salvini: "Drop the green shirt"

Pontida, ten o'clock in the morning. The green shirts are already in the hundreds, lined up behind the barriers in front of the Abbey of San Giacomo as if at a rally that no statute had called. Scarves, flags with Alberto da Giussano, t-shirts with the face of the Senatur. And the chants, the usual ones: Thieving Rome, the North won't forgive, Free Padania. As if time had stopped in the nineties, when that liturgy seemed destined to rewrite the political geography of the country.

It wasn't a rally. It was a funeral. But in Pontida, for Umberto Bossi, the difference has never mattered much.

At noon, the ceremony began at the abbey. Even before that, however, the square had already expressed its opinion on who was welcome and who was not. Matteo Salvini — Deputy Prime Minister, federal secretary, designated heir or usurper depending on one's point of view — arrived with his partner Francesca Verdini, wearing the standard green shirt paired with a black suit, a golden pin of Alberto da Giussano on the lapel, and a green handkerchief in the pocket: a display of chromatic balancing that even the symbols couldn't save. From the back of the crowd, someone shouted take off the green shirt, another shame. The protesters were militants from the Northern People's Party, the formation founded by Roberto Castelli, a former minister and loyalist from the early days.

Castelli, on the sidelines of the ceremony, did not mince words: "Salvini's League is not the League. Bossi's legacy has been betrayed by that party over there." He then added a detail that sounds like an indictment: "With Salvini's arrival on Via Bellerio, green was forbidden, I can testify to that without fear of contradiction. That stuff is another party."

Giorgia Meloni arrived with Antonio Tajani. The reception from the square was entrusted to a chant: secession, secession. Some applause, then the entrance into the church. The protocol held. The square, less so.

At the end of the ceremony, as the coffin exited the church accompanied by the family and the highest state officials, the crowd sang we have a dream in our hearts, to burn the tricolor. Giancarlo Giorgetti — Minister of Economy, a man of the system, a figure who embodies better than anyone else the distance between the League of today and that of its origins — took the microphone and politely asked the square to be silent, to allow the parish priest to recite the eternal rest. The square obeyed. For a moment.

The final act took place at the pratone, the meadow where the annual gathering of militants has been held since 1990. There the coffin was brought, accompanied by a procession led by Giorgetti and Renzo Bossi, the son of the Senatur. Salvini was present, visibly moved. The chants of Free Padania were repeated several times.

Bossi has changed the way of thinking of the Padanians, Castelli said, "he has awakened a people's consciousness." Perhaps. Certainly, he has left a celebration as a legacy — and a dispute over the inheritance. Both were, today, in Pontida.