Are there any examples of separatist/indepence movements that once existed in your country that fizzled out? If so, what happened?

16 comments

1. Sadly in Belgium the “Flemish” want their own state. The nationalist politician try to create a canon etc to create a fake sense of identity. But historically 70% of present day”Flanders” is not even Flemish, but Brabant and Limburg. It’s one of the sillier nationalistic movements.

2. There was a separatist movement in Britanny decades ago that decided to go the terrorist way, in 1978 they bombed Versailles because symbol of “Frankish imperialism over Brittany” and shocked the population and in 2000 they bombed a MacDonald because “symbol of consumption society” and killed a young female employee. After the outrage in Britanny they just vanished. Now in Brittany you have proud regionalism but not really any separatist movement unlike what you would find in Corsica/Basque country

3. [Padania](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padania) is the first thing that comes to mind. A political movement led by Lega Nord claimed that northern Italy, which they called *Padania* should have become independent. This was mostly due to economical reasons, with the north being way more prosperous than the south.
   Its popularity was fairly high in the early 2000s but faded quickly after a few scandals. Nowadays there is no real movement advocating for Padania independence.

   This being said, most other independence movement have fizzled out, the most notable were the Sardinian independence movement, the Venetian independence movement (encompassing most of the north-easter part of the country) and obviously the South Tyrolean independence movement (which advocates more for reunion with Austria more than actual independence).

   In my understanding, the Sardinian independence movement has become a joke in the hand of some questionable politicians that just use a loyal electoral base to do nothing.
   The Venetian movement has some supporters, but not really much political weight.
   The South Tyrolean one was probably the one that was more violent (together with the Sardinian one), going the terrorist attack route, but nowadays they’re pretty chill, although it still has quite a lot of support I don’t think there is any actual talk for independence.

   Maybe worth mentioning are the [Moti di Reggio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggio_revolt) which occurred in the 70s, when a big revolt spread across the city, mostly orchestrated by fascist sympathizers and tied with *’Ndrangheta*.
   The reason for the revolt was the choice made by the government to select Catanzaro as the regional capital of Calabria, which the people of Reggio Calabria saw as a terrible offense.
   In the end there were several deaths, hundreds of injuries, thousands of arrests and it took months and the intervention of the army with literal tanks to take control of the city. During all of this, a part of Reggio, called *Sbarre* declared independence from Italy, proclaiming itself *Repubblica di Sbarre Centrali*.
   After the revolt ended Reggio became one of the strongholds of the *MSI*, the heir of the fascist Party, which managed to get almost 50% of the votes in the city more than once (while averaging at around 5-6% on a national level).

4. Alright, so I’m from Spain, the king of separatist movements.

   Spain has 11 separatist movements. However, only 2-3 have had enough presence to be considered.

   First of all, the elephant in the room. Catalonia. Independence polls in 2020 marked 43% pro-independence, 49% anti-independence, 8% undecided. 2021 catalan elections, which had a 51,3% turnout, gave 74 seats out of 135 to pro-independence parties. Non-proindependence parties only held a majority of the seats in the Barcelona province. There has been a slight fading away, but not much. The general population of Catalonia seems tired of the whole movement.

   The basque were the violent ones. A terrorist group existed (ETA). They killed policemen, politicians… This one has faded away mostly. Current polls mark that only 22% of basques are pro independence. “Bildu”, the current independence advocate party holds 21/75 seats. There’s also PNV, which holds 31/75 seats, this used to be a big pro-independence party, but have remained calm in the last few years.

   There is a third more minor one. Galicia. The “BNG”, currently holds 19/75 seats. Polls mark that about 80% of the population of Galica is against independence.

   The other ones have never gotten any sizeable representation in the autonomic parliaments.

   EDIT: To anyone wondering which are the other 8 separatist movements: Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, the Canary Islands, Navarre (to unite with a basque state), Valencia and the Aran Valley (to unite with an Occitan state). There’s also one in Leon, but these one advocates for creating a Leonese Autonomous Community.

   EDIT2: I doubt any separatist movement will be able to succeed, most have never managed to surpass 50% support from the population, and the EU seems to be mainaning Spain united. No region in Spain wants to leave the EU, and leaving Spain, means leaving the EU.

5. Yeah, the “statalists”.

   While support for unifying the Principalties was fairly high among the upper and middle class (with the peasantry not being that involves at the time), there was a certain pushback by other figures like the ambitious caimacams Teodor Balș (Wallachia) or Nicolae Vogoride (Moldova); Negruzzi and Asachi in Moldova apparently had some statalist tendencies at this time as well.

   The caimacam’s were the darlings of Austria and the Ottomans, who didn’t want the Union to happen, and gave them support to rig the divan elections to get anti-unionist majorities. Didn’t work, and the Little Union happened.

   As the personal union was gradually welded together into one state, some Moldavian notables felt shafted enough by the degradation of Iași that they not only kept the flames of Moldovan particularism going, but revived statalism in the immediate wake of Cuza’s ouster. It flared up in some riot in 1866, fanned by Teodor Boldur-Lățescu and metropolitan Calinic Miclescu, desiring to restore Moldova as its own thing under Nicolae Rosetti-Roznovanu. It got suppressed, the Union was preserved, Carol I became king and the statalists fizzled out, dying out fully between the War of Independence and World War I, with traces of particularism (i.e complaining about being ignored by Bucharest) being all that is left.

6. Currently in the UK just about every part is trying to break away, so it’s hard to think of one that doesn’t. Maybe Cornwall? I know that Mebyon Kernow (the Cornish nat party) had a small rise in the 60s, but I don’t think there’s a particularly strong independence movement there anymore. It’s more just a campaign for devolution.

7. There was a rather strong Moravian independence movement in the Czech Republic during the 90s. It was probably motivated by the successful dissolution of Czechoslovakia.

   Nowadays, the Moravian patriotic parties have a handful of followers and most of them are associated with populist, pro-Russian and anti-EU entities.

   What happened? I think people just realized there are more important things to fight for.

8. [Bavaria?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_nationalism) Although they would tell you it hasn’t died, in reality it disintegrated long ago. In fact I would claim that it wasn’t that serious to begin with. I guess they got some autonomy out of it

9. The Independence movement for Skåne like a decade or two back. Supported by the Skånepartiet iirc. Still exists, but it has completely fizzled out. It was never huge to begin with but it managed to gain a few seats in local elections here and there and regional elections for Skåne.

   Such movements aren’t really realistic here either as a centralised state. Regions and municipality might have autonomy in the things they’re allowed to handle, but they cannot secede at any point.

10. Not quite the same but the English democrats used to campaign for Monmouthshire to leave Wales and become part of England about 15/20 years ago. They’ve seemed to vanish since then.

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12. The most prominent example would be Suedtirol separatism.

    The region intensely resented the awful way it was treated during fascism (intense campaign of forced italianisation) and obviously didn’t digest being separated from the Hapsburg empire.

    During the 50s and the 60s there were violent separatist groups called Befreiungsausschuss Südtirol (BAS) which targeted civilian infrastructures like electricity cables and policemen. One of the reasons was that the central government in 1948 agreed on paper to give Suedtirol special autonomy, but was reluctant to implement the deal. It was only in the 1970s that the Sudtirol packet was implement, the region split from Trentino (the other region we gained from the Hapsburg) and it got a constitutionally protected statute that makes German (and Ladin) co official language at the same level as Italian, makes provisions for the protection of the German community and, most importantly, gives the regional government powers to mostly run its affairs on its own, including fiscal autonomy.

    Nowadays, Suedtirol is the richest region in Italy per capita (even richer than most Austrian states), has a well run autonomy and relations between the 2 ethnic groups OK-ish (though they don’t mix as much as they could).

    The separatist groups mostly died out in the 1970s and nowadays parties in favour of separatism usually score something like 10 to 15% (sometimes more depending on how much immigration from MENA is an issue).

    We have a party called Lega that spent the 90s and the 2000s arguing for the independence of Padania, which is an invented entity encompassing the North but with elastic borders depending on the situation. The region is completely fake and never existed, but Lega was profiting from the resentment in the North of Italy, in which many citizens didn’t want to subsidise the poor North anymore.

    Nowadays the same Lega that was chanting about Neapolitans stinking and their celtic roots has rebranded itself as a nationalistic Italian party and Padania forgotten in their rhetoric.

13. Cyprus, EOKA B organisation took over the government in an attempt to unite Cyprus with Greece (which also was under a military coup at the time). Ironically there was a more prominent movement over a decade earlier which fizzled out when Cyprus gained its independence from the British empire. By the EOKA B time no one except a few extremists cultured and dreams of unification with Greece, but didn’t stop them from bringing down the democratically voted leadership and eventually triggering a full invasion by the Turkish military which is still holding half of the island on the pretext of security.

14. [The Dacke War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacke_War) (1542–1543); not much of a separation movement, but more of an attempt to stop Sweden from interfering in the autonomy of
    [Småland](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sm%C3%A5land) (*”the Small Lands”*; a dozen semi-independent borderlands between Sweden and Denmark)

    In short;
    Dacke and his followers were dissatisfied with the heavy tax burden, the introduction of Lutheranism, and the confiscation of Church property.

    In 1543 the uprising was defeated, and Nils Dacke was killed. In 1350 the first national law code was introduced in Sweden and Småland lost much of its old autonomy. Today Småland is very much a part of Sweden.

15. Not really separatist I think, but some Silesians want the autonomy they had during the Interwar period back. Though, to be honest, kinda hard to accomplish when the majority of people living in Silesia aren’t Silesians. Blame the Soviets for that. As always.

16. Not an independence movement, but in 1919 Vorarlberg (Austria’s westernmost state) voted 80% for starting negotiations to join Switzerland, carried mostly by the common people in the wake of economic hardship after the war and the feeling of having their concerns neglected by far away Vienna. While there were some fractions in Switzerland who showed approval, there was overall a strong opposition to the idea. The main concerns were that it would increase the German speaking, and the Catholic part of Switzerland too much, therefore creating a political imbalance. Italy was also against it, they demanded the Italian speaking Canton of Ticino/Tessin if Switzerland would expand east.