On March 17, 1861, the Italian state was founded.
The Spanish paper, La Vanguardia, noted 150 years later:
“What could be a great opportunity for Italian society to take a look in the mirror could end up plunging the country into melancholy. The Berlusconi government is undertaking this exercise in patriotism and collective memory with little enthusiasm, given that the Northern League, Il Cavaliere’s indispensable partner, is focusing its discourse on denouncing the evils of the weakness of the South, Rome’s centralism and the single-state model that was forged with the Risorgimento.
“Moreover, the prime minister, beset by all kinds of scandals, is not exactly the most plausible leader to uphold the epic of the founding of a nation state which – despite the lacking solidity of its institutions – is one of the major industrial powers in Europe and the world today.”
