176-480: The Democratic Party ( Italian : Partito Democratico , PD ) is a social democratic political party in Italy . The party's secretary is Elly Schlein , elected in the 2023 leadership election , while the party's president is Stefano Bonaccini . The PD was established in 2007 upon the merger of various centre-left parties which had been part of The Olive Tree list in the 2006 Italian general election , mainly
352-720: A grand coalition including the PdL, Civic Choice (SC) and the UdC. Letta was the first Democrat to become prime minister. After Bersani's resignation from party secretary on 20 April 2013, the PD remained without a leader for two weeks. On 11 May 2013, Guglielmo Epifani was elected secretary at the national assembly of the party with 85.8% of vote. Epifani, secretary-general of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL), Italy's largest trade union, from 2002 to 2010,
528-457: A New Olive Tree coalition comprising the PD, IdV and SEL. The three party leaders agreed in what was soon dubbed the pact of Vasto. The pact was broken after the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi as Prime Minister in November 2011, as the PD gave external support to Mario Monti 's technocratic government , along with the PdL and the UdC. A year after the pact of Vasto, the relations between
704-454: A betrayal of his mandate. Four individuals filed their bid for becoming secretary, namely Matteo Renzi , Pippo Civati , Gianni Cuperlo and Gianni Pittella . The leadership race started with voting by party members in local conventions (7–17 November). Renzi came first with 45.3%, followed by Cuperlo (39.4%), Civati (9.4%) and Pittella (5.8%). The first three were admitted to the open primary. On 8 December, Renzi, who won in all regions but
880-797: A broad centre-left coalition, but only minor parties showed interest. As a result, the alliance comprised Together (a list notably including the Italian Socialist Party and the Federation of the Greens ), the Popular Civic List (notably including Popular Alternative , Italy of Values , the Centrists for Europe and Solidary Democracy ) and More Europe (including the Italian Radicals , Forza Europa and
1056-637: A campaign of Bolshevisation , which forced each party to conform to the discipline and orders of Moscow. During the clandestine conference held in Como to ratify the party leadership in May 1924, 35 of the 45 federation secretaries, plus the secretary of the youth federation, voted for Bordiga's Left, four for Gramsci's Centre, and five for Tasca's Right. Before the Lyon Congress in 1926, the Centre won almost all
1232-633: A change of tactics in a democratic direction within the Bolshevik party and consequently within the Comintern. This happened in particular regarding the possibility, previously opposed, of an alliance with the social democratic and bourgeois parties. This provoked a tension in the party between the majority (Left) and the minority factions (the Right and the Centre) supported by the Comintern. The proposals of
1408-734: A former centrist deputy of the DS, in an appeal in Il Foglio newspaper in April 2013. The term Partito Democratico was used for the first time in a formal context by the DL and DS members of the Regional Council of Veneto , who chose to form a joint group named The Olive Tree – Venetian Democratic Party ( L'Ulivo – Partito Democratico Veneto ) in March 2007. The 2006 election result, anticipated by
1584-565: A huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages— ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave", that is "your servant"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton , etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when
1760-572: A joint list named United in the Olive Tree which ran in the election and garnered 31.1% of the vote. The project was later abandoned in 2005 by the SDI. In the 2006 general election , the list obtained 31.3% of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies. The project of a Democratic Party was often mentioned by Prodi as the natural evolution of The Olive Tree and was bluntly envisioned by Michele Salvati ,
1936-471: A little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home. Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country. In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language when varieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as their mother tongue in 2016. Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of
SECTION 10
#17327796181492112-657: A local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels ( phonology , morphology , syntax , lexicon , pragmatics ) and are classified typologically as distinct languages. The standard Italian language has
2288-472: A new Centre newspaper, l'Unità , edited by Gramsci, was founded. The Left continued as a faction, principally functioning in exile. It published the newspaper Bilan , a monthly theoretical bulletin. In 1926, Bordiga and Gramsci were arrested and imprisoned on the island of Ustica . In 1927, Palmiro Togliatti was elected secretary in place of Gramsci. In 1930, Bordiga was expelled from the Comintern and accused of Trotskyism . After Joseph Stalin dissolved
2464-474: A new phase, the national board decided to put an end to Letta's government on 13 February and form a new one led by Renzi as the latter had proposed. Subsequently, Renzi was sworn in as prime minister on 22 February at the head of an identical coalition. On 28 February, the PD officially joined the PES as a full member, ending a decade-long debate. In the 2014 European Parliament election , the party obtained 40.8% of
2640-658: A poetic and literary origin in the works of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, although the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century, the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as
2816-540: A process aimed at uniting left-wing and centre-left forces into a single political entity was started. In 1995, Romano Prodi , a former minister of Industry on behalf of the left-wing faction of Christian Democracy (DC), entered politics and founded The Olive Tree ( L'Ulivo ), a centre-left coalition including the PDS, the Italian People's Party (PPI), the Federation of the Greens (FdV), Italian Renewal (RI),
2992-701: A progressive left-wing and democratic socialist party. A third of the PCI membership, led by Armando Cossutta , refused to join the PDS, and instead seceded to form the Communist Refoundation Party . In all its history, the PCI was particularly strong in Central Italy , in the Red Regions of Emilia-Romagna , Marche , Tuscany , and Umbria , as well as in the industrialised cities of Northern Italy . The party's municipal showcase
3168-417: A renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i.e., the problem of the language ), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving
3344-601: A result, 16 regions out of 20, including all those of central and southern Italy, were governed by the centre-left while the opposition Lega Nord led Veneto and Lombardy and propped up a centre-right government in Liguria. After a huge defeat in the 2016 constitutional referendum (59.9% no, 40.1% yes), Renzi resigned as prime minister in December 2016 and was replaced by fellow Democrat Paolo Gentiloni , whose government 's composition and coalition were very similar to those of
3520-575: A result. Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by languages of Italy, especially Tuscan and Venetian. These varieties were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts . Italy came to enjoy increasing artistic prestige within Europe. A mark of
3696-430: A seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ , as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin . Some examples: Italian Communist Party The Italian Communist Party ( Italian : Partito Comunista Italiano , PCI ) was a communist and democratic socialist political party in Italy. It
SECTION 20
#17327796181493872-479: A single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible ; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as educated native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so; however, the level of intelligibility
4048-491: A single world party according to Vladimir Lenin 's vision. In the 1921 Italian general election , the party obtained 4.6% of the vote and 15 seats in the country's Chamber of Deputies . At the time, it was an active yet small faction within the Italian political left, which was strongly led by the PSI, while on the international level it was Soviet -led. During its 2nd Congress in 1922, the new party registered 43,000 members. This
4224-697: A speech heralding the Revolutions of 1989 , a move now referred to in Italian politics as the svolta della Bolognina (Bolognina turning point). The collapse of the Communist governments in the Eastern Europe led Occhetto to conclude that the era of Eurocommunism was over. Under his leadership, the PCI dissolved and refounded itself as the Democratic Party of the Left , which branded itself as
4400-445: A subsequent open primary were called for October, with Franceschini, Pier Luigi Bersani and Ignazio Marino were running for the leadership, while a fourth candidate, Rutigliano, was excluded because of lack of signatures. In local conventions, a 56.4% of party members voted and Bersani was by far the most voted candidate with 55.1% of the vote, largely ahead of Franceschini (37.0%) and Marino (7.9%). Three million people participated in
4576-453: A traditionally conservative region where due to divisions within the centre-right Nichi Vendola of SEL was re-elected with the PD's support. In September 2011, Bersani was invited by Antonio Di Pietro 's IdV to take part to its annual late summer convention in Vasto , Abruzzo . Bersani, who had been accused by Di Pietro of avoiding him to court the centre-right UdC, proposed the formation of
4752-513: A united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions: A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to
4928-427: Is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan , 85% with Sardinian , 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese , 78% with Ladin , 77% with Romanian . Estimates may differ according to sources. One study, analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology , inflection , discourse , syntax , vocabulary , and intonation ), estimated that distance between Italian and Latin
5104-623: Is Freedom – The Daisy (DL). In the summer of 2003, Prodi suggested that centre-left forces should participate in the 2004 European Parliament election with a common list. Whereas the Union of Democrats for Europe (UDEUR) and the far-left parties refused, four parties accepted, namely the DS, DL, the Italian Democratic Socialists (SDI) and the European Republicans Movement (MRE). These launched
5280-691: Is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . Italian is the least divergent language from Latin , together with Sardinian (meaning that Italian and Sardinian are the most conservative Romance languages). Spoken by about 85 million people, including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy , San Marino , Switzerland ( Ticino and
5456-759: Is also spoken by a minority in Monaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country. Italian was the official language in Savoy and in Nice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under the Treaty of Turin , a development that triggered the " Niçard exodus ", or the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy, and the Niçard Vespers . Giuseppe Garibaldi complained about
Democratic Party (Italy) - Misplaced Pages Continue
5632-534: Is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin. In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian . As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French; see Swiss Italian ), although its use there has moderately declined since
5808-460: Is markedly lower between Italian-Spanish, and considerably higher between the Iberian sister languages of Portuguese-Spanish. Speakers of this latter pair can communicate with one another with remarkable ease, each speaking to the other in his own native language without slang/jargon. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it
5984-504: Is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries. Some speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties ) and a local language of Italy , most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin. Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of
6160-410: Is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around
6336-648: Is the main working language of the Holy See , serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta . Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels , and
6512-549: Is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the 19th century. Other examples are Cocoliche , an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires , and Lunfardo . The Rioplatense Spanish dialect of Argentina and Uruguay today has thus been heavily influenced by both standard Italian and Italian regional languages as
6688-509: The Il Globo (Australia) and the La gazzetta del Sud Africa (South Africa). Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example,
6864-991: The La Voce del Popolo ( Croatia ), the Corriere d'Italia (Germany), the L'italoeuropeo (United Kingdom), the Passaparola ( Luxembourg ), the America Oggi (United States), the Corriere Canadese and the Corriere Italiano (Canada), the Il punto d'incontro (Mexico), the L'Italia del Popolo ( Argentina ), the Fanfulla (Brazil), the Gente d'Italia ( Uruguay ), the La Voce d'Italia ( Venezuela ),
7040-526: The 2012 regional election , Rosario Crocetta (member of the PD) was elected president with 30.5% of the vote thanks to the support of the UdC, but the coalition failed to secure an outright majority in the Regional Assembly. For the first time in 50 years, a left-wing politician had the chance to govern Sicily. On 25 November, Bersani came ahead in the first round of the primary election with 44.9% of
7216-802: The Communist Refoundation Party (PRC). The roots of the PCI date back to 1921, when the I Congress of the Communist Party of Italy was held in Livorno on 21 January, following a split in the XVII Congress of the Italian Socialist Party . The split occurred after the Congress of Livorno refused to expel the reformist group as required by the Communist International (Comintern). The main factions of
Democratic Party (Italy) - Misplaced Pages Continue
7392-639: The Democratic Centre ). In the election, the PD obtained its worst result ever: 18.7% of the vote, well behind the M5S (32.7%) and narrowly ahead of the Lega (17.4%). Following his party's defeat, Renzi resigned from secretary and his deputy Martina started functioning as acting secretary. Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] )
7568-401: The Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of Northern Italy , the Italo-Dalmatian , Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco- Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy , Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in
7744-465: The Grisons ), Corsica , and Vatican City . It has official minority status in Croatia , Slovenian Istria , and the municipalities of Santa Tereza and Encantado in Brazil . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia . Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania , although Italian
7920-416: The Historic Compromise of the 1970s, which ended in 1980, until its dissolution in 1991, not without controversy and much debate among its members. The PCI included Marxist–Leninists and Marxist revisionists , with a notable social-democratic faction being the miglioristi . Under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer and the influence of the miglioristi in the 1970s and 1980s, Marxism–Leninism
8096-479: The Italian Socialists (SI) and Democratic Union (UD). The coalition in alliance with the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC) won the 1996 general election and Prodi became prime minister. In February 1998, the PDS merged with minor social democratic parties ( Labour Federation and Social Christians , among others) to become the Democrats of the Left (DS), while in March 2002 the PPI, RI and The Democrats (Prodi's own party, launched in 1999) became Democracy
8272-454: The Italian road to socialism , the realisation of the communist project through democracy, repudiating the use of violence and applying the Constitution of Italy in all its parts, a strategy inaugurated under Palmiro Togliatti but that some date back to Gramsci, would become the leitmotif of the party's history. Having changed its name in 1943, the PCI became the second largest political party of Italy after World War II , attracting
8448-399: The Kingdom of Italy in the Dodecanese ). Italian is widely spoken in Malta , where nearly two-thirds of the population can speak it fluently (see Maltese Italian ). Italian served as Malta's official language until 1934, when it was abolished by the British colonial administration amid strong local opposition. Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in
8624-698: The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia ), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire . Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states . Those dialects now have considerable variety . As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian . The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are syntactic gemination of initial consonants in some contexts and
8800-658: The League and Forza Italia , in February 2021. In the 2022 Italian general election , the PD-led coalition achieved similar results to 2018 and returned to the opposition. Prominent Democrats include former leaders Walter Veltroni , Dario Franceschini , Nicola Zingaretti and Enrico Letta . Former members have included Giorgio Napolitano ( President of Italy , 2006–2015), Sergio Mattarella (President of Italy, 2015–present), four Prime Ministers ( Romano Prodi , Giuliano Amato , Massimo D'Alema and Renzi), three former leaders ( Pier Luigi Bersani , Guglielmo Epifani and, again, Renzi), as well as David Sassoli ( President of
8976-408: The Organic centre-left governments, although it never directly joined a government. It successfully lobbied Fiat to set up the AvtoVAZ (Lada) car factory in the Soviet Union (1966). The party did best in Emilia-Romagna , Tuscany, and Umbria, where it regularly won the local administrative elections, and in some of the industrialised cities of Northern Italy . At the city government level during
SECTION 50
#17327796181499152-423: The Placiti Cassinesi from the province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the Veronese Riddle , probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The Commodilla catacomb inscription is also a similar case. The Italian language has progressed through a long and slow process, which started after
9328-454: The Portella della Ginestra massacre , in which eleven leftist peasants (including four children) were murdered at an International Workers' Day parade in Palermo by Salvatore Giuliano and his gang. In the political chaos that ensued, the United States government engineered the expulsion of all left-wing ministers from the cabinet on 31 May. The PCI would not have a national position in government again. De Gasperi did this under pressure from
9504-400: The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan , led to a complete break with Moscow in 1979. In 1980, the PCI refused to participate in the international conference of Communist parties in Paris; cash payments to the PCI continued until 1984. Achille Occhetto became general secretary of the PCI in 1988. At a 1989 conference in a working-class section of Bologna, Occhetto stunned the party faithful with
9680-411: The Svolta di Salerno ( Salerno 's turning point), Togliatti, who had returned to Italy the month prior after 18 years of exile, agreed to cooperate with King Victor Emmanuel III and his prime minister of Italy , the Marshal Pietro Badoglio . After the turn, the PCI took part in every government during the national liberation and constitutional period from June 1944 to May 1947. Their contribution to
9856-406: The Western Roman Empire's fall in the 5th century. The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri , written in his native Florentine . Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia , to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed
10032-406: The 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture. As of 2022, Australia had the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. This occurred because of support by the Italian community in Australia and the Italian Government and also because of successful educational reform efforts led by local governments in Australia. From
10208-458: The 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry. Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had probably diverged long before the first written records appeared since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and
10384-447: The 1970s and 1980s and toward Eurocommunism and the Socialist International . The PCI sought a collaboration with the socialist and Christian democracy parties, a policy known the Historic Compromise . The kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro , the DC leader, by the Red Brigades in May 1978 put an end to any hopes of such a compromise. The compromise was largely abandoned as a PCI policy in 1981. The Proletarian Unity Party merged into
10560-438: The 1970s. It is official both on the national level and on regional level in two cantons : Ticino and Grisons . In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in the Italian Grisons . Ticino, which includes Lugano , the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant. Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City . Italian
10736-818: The 2,400 members of the party's constituent assembly; each voter could choose between a number of lists, each of them associated with a candidate for secretary. All candidates interested in running for the PD leadership had to be associated with one of the founding parties and present at least 2,000 valid signatures by 30 July 2007. A total of ten candidates officially registered their candidacy: Walter Veltroni , Rosy Bindi , Enrico Letta , Furio Colombo , Marco Pannella , Antonio Di Pietro , Mario Adinolfi , Pier Giorgio Gawronski , Jacopo Schettini , Lucio Cangini and Amerigo Rutigliano . Of these, Pannella and Di Pietro were rejected because of their involvement in external parties (the Radicals and Italy of Values respectively) whereas Cangini and Rutigliano did not manage to present
SECTION 60
#173277961814910912-399: The 2005 primary election in which over four million voters endorsed Prodi as candidate for prime minister, gave a push to the project of a unified centre-left party. Eight parties agreed to merge into the PD: While the DL agreed to the merger with virtually no resistance, the DS experienced a more heated final congress. On 19 April 2007, approximately 75% of party members voted in support of
11088-432: The Chamber. As a result, Bersani, who refused any agreement with the PdL and was rejected by the M5S, failed to form a government. After an agreement with the centre-right parties, Bersani put forward Franco Marini as his party's candidate for President to succeed to Giorgio Napolitano on 17 April. However, Renzi, several Democratic delegates and SEL did not support Marini. On 18 April, Marini received just 521 votes in
11264-416: The Communist International in 1943, the exiled members of the PCd'I in Moscow changed the party's name to the PCI on 15 May. Under this name, it reorganised in Italy and became a parliamentary party after the fall of Fascism. The party and its militants were actively involved in the resistance to Benito Mussolini 's regime through clandestine action. They were well prepared for clandestine activity because of
11440-504: The Communist city council built 31 nursery schools, 896 flats, and 9 schools. Health care improved substantially, street lighting was installed, new drains and municipal launderettes were built and 8,000 children received subsidised school meals. In 1972, the then-mayor of Bologna, Renato Zangheri , introduced a new and innovative traffic plan with strict limitations for private vehicles and a renewed concentration on cheap public transport. Bologna's social services continued to expand throughout
11616-416: The DC leader and prime minister of Italy, was losing popularity, and feared that the leftist coalition would take power. While the PCI was growing particularly fast due to its organising efforts supporting sharecroppers in Sicily , Tuscany , and Umbria , movements that were also bolstered by the reforms of Fausto Gullo , the Italian Minister of Agriculture . On 1 May, the nation was thrown into crisis by
11792-411: The European Parliament , 2019–2022), Francesco Rutelli , Pietro Grasso and Carlo Calenda . As of 2024, four regions have Democratic presidents: Emilia-Romagna , Tuscany , Apulia and Campania . Following Tangentopoli scandals, the end of the so-called First Republic and the transformation of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) into the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) in the early 1990s,
11968-442: The Hungarian insurgents as counter-revolutionaries as reported at the time in l'Unità , the official PCI newspaper. Giuseppe Di Vittorio , chief of the communist trade union Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL), repudiated the leadership position, as did prominent party member Antonio Giolitti and Italian Socialist Party national secretary Pietro Nenni , a close ally of the PCI. Napolitano later hinted at doubts over
12144-405: The II Congress in Moscow of 1920. The official program, drawn up in ten points, began with the intrinsically catastrophic nature of the capitalist system and terminated with the extinction of the state. It follows in a synthetic way the model outlined by Lenin for the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) . For a while, this identity resisted, but the fast progress of the reaction in Europe produced
12320-417: The Italian dialects has declined in the modern era , as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media from newspapers to radio to television, diglossia is still frequently encountered in Italy and triglossia is not uncommon in emigrant communities among older speakers. Both situations normally involve some degree of code-switching and code-mixing . Notes: Italian has
12496-439: The Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie . Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi ( The Betrothed ) by Alessandro Manzoni , further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno " ( Florence 's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition. After unification,
12672-539: The Left were no longer accepted and the conflict between the factions became irremediable. In 1923, some members of the party were arrested and put on trial for "conspiracy against the State". This allowed the intense activity of the Communist International to deprive the party's left-wing of authority and give control to the minority centre which had aligned with Moscow. In 1924–1925, the Comintern began
12848-579: The Leninist preferred the single world party as it was internationalist and strongly centralised, while on the other side the Italians wanted a party more tailored to their nation's peculiarities and more autonomy. After the fall of Fascist Italy on 25 July 1943, the PCI returned to a formally legal status, playing a major role during the national liberation, known in Italy as Resistenza (Resistance) and forming many partisan groups. In April 1944, after
13024-556: The Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank , humanism , and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian). During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from
13200-618: The PCI in 1984. During the Years of Lead , the PCI strongly opposed the terrorism and the Red Brigades, who in turn murdered or wounded many PCI members or trade unionists close to the PCI. According to Mitrokhin, the party asked the Soviets to pressure the StB , Czechoslovakia's State Security, to withdraw their support to the group, which Moscow was unable or unwilling to do. This, along with
13376-491: The PCI over this issue. Napolitano became a leading member of the miglioristi faction within the PCI that promoted a social-democratic direction in party policy. In the mid-1960s, the United States Department of State estimated the party membership to be approximately 1,350,000, or 4.2% of the working age population, making it the largest Communist party in per capita terms in the capitalist world at
13552-474: The PCI, were among the more numerous partisan forces. The PCI took part in the 1946 Italian general election and the 1946 Italian institutional referendum , campaigning for a republic. In the election, the PCI was third, behind Christian Democracy (DC) and the PSI, gaining almost 19% of votes and electing 104 members of the Constituent Assembly of Italy . The popular referendum resulted in
13728-457: The PD and IdV had become tense. IdV and its leader, Antonio Di Pietro, were thus excluded from the coalition talks led by Bersani. To these talks were instead invited SEL led by Nichi Vendola and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) led by Riccardo Nencini . The talks resulted on 13 October 2012 in the Pact of Democrats and Progressives (later known as Italy. Common Good ) and produced the rules for
13904-737: The PD and formed Article 1 – Democratic and Progressive Movement (MDP), along with splinters from the Italian Left (SI) led by Arturo Scotto . Most of the splinters as well as Scotto were former Democrats of the Left . In December 2017, the MDP, SI and Possible would launch Free and Equal (LeU) under the leadership of the President of the Senate Pietro Grasso (another PD splinter). In local conventions, Renzi came first (66.7%), Orlando second (25.3%) and Emiliano third (8.0%). In
14080-571: The PD decided to form a less diverse coalition. The party invited the Radicals and the Socialist Party (PS) to join its lists, but only the Radicals accepted and formed an alliance with Italy of Values (IdV) which was set to join the PD after the election. The PD included many notable candidates and new faces in its lists and Walter Veltroni , who tried to present the PD as the party of the renewal in contrast both with Silvio Berlusconi and
14256-490: The PD was forced to support IdV candidate Carlo Costantini . In October, Veltroni, who distanced from Di Pietro many times, declared that "on some issues he [Di Pietro] is distant from the democratic language of the centre-left". After a crushing defeat in the February 2009 Sardinian regional election , Walter Veltroni resigned as party secretary. His deputy Dario Franceschini took over as interim party secretary to guide
14432-541: The PD would organise the next congress of the Party of European Socialists (PES) in Rome in early 2014, sparked protests among some of the party's Christian democrats, who opposed PES membership. Epifani was little more than a secretary pro tempore and in fact frequently repeated that he was not going to run for a full term as secretary in the leadership race that would take place in late 2013, saying that his candidacy would be
14608-594: The PD, namely Letta (2013–2014), Renzi (2014–2016) and Paolo Gentiloni (2016–2018). The PD was the second-largest party in the 2018 Italian general election , where the centre-left coalition came third. The party was returned to government in September 2019 with the Conte II Cabinet , as junior partner of the Five Star Movement , and joined the national unity Draghi Cabinet , comprising also
14784-438: The PD. They comprised splinters from SEL (most of whom led by Gennaro Migliore , see Freedom and Rights ), SC (notably including Stefania Giannini , Pietro Ichino and Andrea Romano ) and the M5S. Consequently, the party increased its parliamentary numbers to 311 deputies and 114 senators by April 2015. Otherwise, Sergio Cofferati , Giuseppe Civati and Stefano Fassina left. They were the first and most notable splinters among
14960-727: The Renzi Cabinet. In February 2017, Renzi resigned also as PD secretary to run in the 2017 leadership election . Renzi, Andrea Orlando (one of the leaders of the Remake Italy faction; the other leader Matteo Orfini was the party's president and supported Renzi) and Michele Emiliano were the three contenders for the party's leadership. Subsequently, a substantial group of leftists (24 deputies, 14 senators and 3 MEPs), led by Enrico Rossi ( Democratic Socialists ) and Roberto Speranza ( Reformist Area ), backed by Massimo D'Alema , Pier Luigi Bersani and Guglielmo Epifani , left
15136-606: The Socialist Party (PS) and the Greens in its lists, and proposed a similar pact to Democratic Left (SD). However, the Socialists, the Greens and Democratic Left decided instead to contest the election together as a new alliance called Left and Freedom which failed to achieve the 4% threshold required to return any MEPs, but damaged the PD, which gained 26.1% of the vote, returning 21 MEPs. The national convention and
15312-690: The Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy within the European Commission for Federica Mogherini , his minister of Foreign Affairs. In January 2015, Sergio Mattarella , a veteran left-wing Christian Democrat and founding member of the PD, whose candidacy had been proposed by Renzi and unanimously endorsed by the party's delegates, was elected President of Italy during a presidential election triggered by President Giorgio Napolitano 's resignation. During Renzi's first year as prime minister, several MPs defected from other parties to join
15488-672: The United States Secretary of State, George Marshall , who had informed him that anti-communism was a pre-condition for receiving American aid, and Ambassador James Clement Dunn , who had directly asked de Gasperi to dissolve the parliament and remove the PCI. In the 1948 Italian general election , the party joined the PSI in the Popular Democratic Front (FDP) but was defeated by the DC. The United States government provided support to anti-PCI groups in
15664-504: The United States ordered a removal from government of the PCI and PSI. The PCI–PSI alliance lasted until 1956; the two parties continued to govern at the local and regional level until the 1990s. Apart from the 1944–1947 years and occasional external support to the organic centre-left (1960s–1970s), which included the PSI, the PCI always remained at the opposition in the Italian Parliament , with more accommodation as part of
15840-645: The acronym PD in colours reminiscent of the Italian tricolour flag (green, white and red). In the words of Ermete Realacci , green represents the ecologist and social-liberal cultures, white the Catholic solidarity and red the socialist and social democratic traditions. The green-white-red idea was coined by Schettini during his campaign. After the premature fall of the Prodi II Cabinet in January 2008,
16016-444: The case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time ( Late Middle Ages ) gave its language weight, although Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside
16192-653: The colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school). Italian
16368-573: The country (some 0.42% of the total population). Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians. Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807. It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of
16544-518: The country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language. The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools. The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania, due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to
16720-446: The country. A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s. Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation . Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara , still has several Italian schools, established during
16896-579: The country. The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians ( Istrian Italians ) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population). Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages. The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ) in
17072-605: The course of the post-war period, the PCI demonstrated in cities like Bologna and Florence their capacity for uncorrupt, efficient and clean government. After the 1975 Italian local elections , the PCI was the strongest force in nearly all of the municipal councils of the great cities. The Soviet Union's brutal suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 created a split within the PCI. The party leadership, including Palmiro Togliatti and Giorgio Napolitano (who in 2006 became President of Italy ), regarded
17248-464: The design and fashion industries, in some sports such as football and especially in culinary terms. In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular —other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often called " Italian dialects ", a label that can be very misleading if it is understood to mean "dialects of Italian". The Romance dialects of Italy are local evolutions of spoken Latin that pre-date
17424-534: The diffusion of Italian television in the country. Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period , Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as Libya. Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule , Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi , who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of
17600-401: The early and mid-1970s. The city centre was restored, centres for the mentally sick were instituted to help those who had been released from recently closed psychiatric hospitals , handicapped persons were offered training and found suitable jobs, afternoon activities for schoolchildren were made less mindless than the traditional doposcuola (after-school activities), and school programming for
17776-478: The educated gentlemen was to make the Grand Tour , visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It was expected that the visitor would learn at least some Italian, understood as language based on Florentine. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until
17952-438: The efforts made by Italy's top authorities to prevent any of the alleged Italian war criminals from being extradited and taken to court. The denial of Italian war crimes was backed up by the Italian state, academe, and media, re-inventing Italy as only a victim of Nazism and the post-war Foibe massacres . The party gained considerable electoral success during the following years and occasionally supplied external support to
18128-403: The election of Bersani, perceived by some moderates as an old-style social democrat, Francesco Rutelli (a long-time critic of the party's course) and other centrists and liberals within the PD left to form a new centrist party, named Alliance for Italy (ApI). Following March 2009, and especially after Bersani's victory, many deputies, senators, one MEP and several regional/local councillors left
18304-742: The election, and argued that should the PCI win, the Marshall Plan and other aids could be terminated. It spent $ 10–20 million on anti-communist propaganda and other covert operations, much of it through the Economic Cooperation Administration of the Marshall Plan, and then laundered through individual banks. Fearful of the possible FDP's electoral victory, the British and American governments also undermined their campaign for legal justice by tolerating
18480-453: The election, the PD and its coalition fared much worse than expected and according to pollsters predictions. The PD won just 25.4% of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies (−8.0% from 2008) and the centre-left coalition narrowly won the majority in the house over the centre-right coalition (29.5% to 29.3%). Even worse, in the Senate the PD and its allies failed to get an outright majority due to
18656-462: The establishment of Italian, and as such are sister languages to the Tuscan that was the historical source of Italian. They can be quite different from Italian and from each other, with some belonging to different linguistic branches of Romance. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered " historical language minorities ", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by
18832-487: The fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy. Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as Spain in the Kingdom of Naples , or Austria in
19008-421: The first ballot, short of the 672 needed, as more than 200 centre-left delegates rebelled. On 19 April, the PD and SEL selected Romano Prodi to be their candidate in the fourth ballot. Despite his candidacy had received unanimous support among the two parties' delegates, Prodi obtained only 395 votes in the fourth ballot as more than 100 centre-left electors did not vote for him. After the vote, Prodi pulled out of
19184-457: The first years of the PCd'I, there was no official leader; the accepted leader, first of the faction/tendency and then of the party, was Bordiga (Left) of the communist left current. Leaders of the minority currents were Angelo Tasca (Right) and Gramsci (Centre). As a territorial section of Comintern, the PCd'I adopted the same program, the same conception of the party and the same tactics adopted by
19360-573: The former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin , Longo and other PCI leaders became alarmed at the possibility of a coup in Italy after the Athens Colonel coup in April 1967 that led to the Greek junta . These fears were not completely unfounded as there had been two attempted coups in Italy, Piano Solo in 1964 and Golpe Borghese in 1970, by military and neo-fascist groups. The PCI's Giorgio Amendola formally requested Soviet assistance to prepare
19536-476: The free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language. According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs , every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in
19712-534: The freedom of culture. At the time, the PCI, which had absorbed the PSI's left-wing, the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity , so strengthening its leadership over the Italian left, was the largest communist party in a capitalist state , garnering 34.4% of the vote in the 1976 Italian general election . Relationships between the PCI and the Soviet Union gradually fell apart as the party moved away from Soviet obedience and Marxist–Leninist orthodoxy in
19888-489: The island of Corsica (but not in the neighbouring Sardinia , which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians , would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere ). The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia , as well as
20064-577: The language has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants. During the Middle Ages , the established written language in Europe was Latin, although the great majority of people were illiterate, and only few were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula , as in most of Europe, most would instead speak
20240-640: The language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South. In Venezuela , Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers. In Uruguay , people who speak Italian as their home language are 1.1% of
20416-498: The late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton , for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. Within the Catholic Church , Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents. Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in
20592-534: The late 19th to the mid-20th century, millions of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence. In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil, where Talian
20768-567: The law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica ) is closely related to medieval Tuscan , from which Standard Italian derives and evolved. The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the natural changes that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata . The most prevalent were substrata (the language of
20944-425: The merger of the DS into the PD. The left-wing opposition, led by Fabio Mussi , obtained just 15% of the support within the party. A third motion, presented by Gavino Angius and supportive of the PD only within the Party of European Socialists (PES), obtained 10% of the vote. Both Mussi and Angius refused to join the PD and, following the congress, founded a new party called Democratic Left (SD). On 22 May 2007,
21120-412: The nation was unified in 1861. Italian is a Romance language , a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan , especially its Florentine dialect , and is, therefore, an Italo-Dalmatian language , a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian . According to Ethnologue , lexical similarity
21296-408: The necessary 2,000 valid signatures for the 9 pm deadline and Colombo's candidacy was instead made into hiatus to give him 48 additional hours to integrate the required documentation. Colombo later decided to retire his candidacy citing his impossibility to fit with all the requirements. All rejected candidates had the chance against the decision in 48 hours' time, with Pannella and Rutigliano being
21472-561: The new Italian democratic constitution was decisive. The Gullo decrees of 1944, named after Fausto Gullo , sought to improve social and economic conditions in the countryside. During Badoglio and Ferruccio Parri 's cabinets, Togliatti served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Italy . During the Resistance, the PCI became increasingly popular, as the majority of partisans were communists. The Garibaldi Brigades , promoted by
21648-585: The new party were L'Ordine Nuovo, based in Turin and led by Antonio Gramsci , and the Maximalist faction led by Nicola Bombacci . Amadeo Bordiga was elected secretary of the new party. The party was officially founded as the Communist Party of Italy – Section of the Communist International ( Partito Comunista d'Italia – Sezione dell'Internazionale Comunista ), since the Comintern was structured as
21824-408: The number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and Italian, as the dominant language, spread. Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian Peninsula , as well as the prestige variety used on
22000-725: The official political line and refused to support the final report. Unexpectedly to his hosts, his speech challenged the communist leadership in Moscow. He refused to excommunicate the Chinese Communist Party and directly told Brezhnev that the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia , which he called "the tragedy in Prague", had made clear the considerable differences within the communist movement on fundamental questions, such as national sovereignty, socialist democracy, and
22176-461: The only two candidates to appeal against it. Both were rejected on 3 August. On 14 October 2007, Veltroni was elected leader with about 75% of the national votes in an open primary attended by over three million voters. Veltroni was proclaimed secretary during a party's constituent assembly held in Milan on 28 October 2007. On 21 November, the new logo was unveiled. It depicts an olive branch and
22352-451: The open primary on 25 October 2009; Bersani was elected new secretary of the party with about 53% of the vote, ahead of Franceschini with 34% and Marino with 13%. On 7 November, during the first meeting of the new national assembly, Bersani was declared secretary, Rosy Bindi was elected party president (with Marina Sereni and Ivan Scalfarotto vice presidents), Enrico Letta deputy secretary and Antonio Misiani treasurer. In reaction to
22528-456: The open primary on 30 April, Renzi won 69.2% of the vote as opposed to Orlando's 20.0% and Emiliano's 10.9%. On 7 May, Renzi was sworn in as secretary again, with Maurizio Martina as deputy and Orfini was confirmed president. In the 2017 Sicilian regional election , Crocetta did not stand and the PD-led coalition was defeated. In the run-up of the 2018 general election , the PD tried to form
22704-630: The openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà , annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go"). There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of
22880-403: The organising committee of the nascent party was formed. It consisted of 45 members, mainly politicians from the two aforementioned major parties and the leaders of the other six minor parties. Also leading external figures such as Giuliano Amato , Marcello De Cecco , Gad Lerner , Carlo Petrini and Tullia Zevi were included. On 18 June, the committee decided the rules for the open election of
23056-584: The original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most probably simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either. Throughout Italy, regional varieties of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian , are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors:
23232-458: The other hand, almost everyone still speaks the Corsican idiom , which, due to its linguistic proximity to the Italian standard language, appears both linguistically as an Italian dialect and therefore as a carrier of Italian culture, despite the French government's decades-long efforts to cut Corsica off from the Italian motherland. Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it
23408-512: The party has also been influenced by Christian left , social liberalism and Third Way , especially under Matteo Renzi 's leadership, the PD moved closer to social liberalism. Under latter leaders, especially Schlein, whose upbringing is influenced by the radical left, environmentalism and green politics , the party has moved to the left. Between 2013 and 2018, the Council of Ministers was led by three successive prime ministers of Italy from
23584-602: The party in case of such an event. The KGB drew up and implemented a plan to provide the PCI with its own intelligence and clandestine signal corps. From 1967 through 1973, PCI members were sent to East Germany and Moscow to receive training in clandestine warfare and information gathering techniques by both the Stasi and the KGB. Shortly before the 1972 Italian general election , Longo personally wrote to Leonid Brezhnev asking for and receiving an additional $ 5.7 million in funding. This
23760-644: The party led a campaign against the Second Italo-Ethiopian War . The party and communist partisans, among others, then went on to play a major role in the resistance movement that led to the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy . On 15 May 1943, the party changed its official name to the Italian Communist Party ( Partito Comunista Italiano ), often shortened to PCI. This change was not surprising as PCI started being used as
23936-511: The party strived to organise itself on some bases that were not a mere reproduction of the traditional parties' bases. It then took again some arguments that distinguished the battle within the PSI, namely the idea that it is necessary to form an environment fiercely hostile to bourgeois society and that is an anticipation of the future socialist society. The purpose of this was not considered utopian because already in this society, especially in production, some structures are born on future results. In
24112-421: The party to join the UdC, ApI and other minor parties. They included many Rutelliani and most Teodems . In March 2010, a big round of regional elections , involving eleven regions, took place. The PD lost four regions to the centre-right ( Piedmont , Lazio , Campania and Calabria ), and maintained its hold on six ( Liguria , Emilia-Romagna , Tuscany , Marche , Umbria and Basilicata ), plus Apulia ,
24288-413: The party toward the selection of a new stable leader. Franceschini was elected by the party's national assembly with 1,047 votes out of 1,258. His only opponent Arturo Parisi won a mere 92 votes. Franceschini was the first former Christian Democrat to lead the party. The 2009 European Parliament election was an important test for the PD. Prior to the election, the PD considered offering hospitality to
24464-403: The party's acronym around 1924–1925. This name change also reflected a change in the Comintern's role—it increasingly became a federation of national communist parties. This trend accelerated after Lenin's death and its new name emphasised the party's shift from an international focus to an Italian one. At the time, it was a hotly contested issue for the two major factions of the party. On one side,
24640-406: The population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II , contributed to
24816-559: The previous centre-left government, ran an intense and modern campaign which led him to visit all provinces of Italy , but that was not enough. In the 2008 general election on 13–14 April 2008, the PD–IdV coalition won 37.5% of the vote and was defeated by the centre-right coalition , composed of The People of Freedom (PdL), the Lega Nord and the Movement for Autonomy (46.8%). The PD
24992-469: The proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left. Although use of
25168-528: The pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line ); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to
25344-526: The propriety of his decision. He would eventually write in From the Communist Party to European Socialism. A Political Autobiography ( Dal Pci al socialismo europeo. Un'autobiografia politica ) that he regretted his justification of the Soviet intervention but quieted his concerns at the time for the sake of party unity and the international leadership of Soviet Communism . Giolitti and Nenni went on to split with
25520-415: The publication of Agnolo Monosini 's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612. An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed
25696-412: The race and Bersani resigned as party secretary. Bindi, the party's president, also resigned. The day after, Napolitano accepted to stand again for election and was re-elected President with the support of most parliamentary parties. On 28 April, Enrico Letta , the party's deputy secretary and former Christian Democrat , was sworn in as Prime Minister of Italy at the head of a government based around
25872-843: The ranks of the party's internal left, but several others followed either Civati (who launched Possible ) or Fassina (who launched Future to the Left and Italian Left ) in the following months. By May 2016, the PD's parliamentary numbers had gone down to 303 deputies and 114 senators. In the 2015 regional elections , Democratic presidents were elected (or re-elected) in five regions out of seven, namely Enrico Rossi in Tuscany , Luca Ceriscioli in Marche , Catiuscia Marini in Umbria , Vincenzo De Luca in Campania and Michele Emiliano in Apulia . As
26048-420: The referendum that allowed France to annex Savoy and Nice, and a group of his followers (among the Italian Savoyards ) took refuge in Italy in the following years. Corsica passed from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1769 after the Treaty of Versailles . Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859. Giuseppe Garibaldi called for the inclusion of the " Corsican Italians " within Italy when Rome
26224-440: The replacement of the monarchy with a republic, after 54% of the votes were in favour and 46% against. Luciano Canfora saw the Salerno Turn and 1944 as a rebirth of the PCI, and said "the PCI had gradually followed a path which required it, as a historical task, to occupy the space of social democracy in the Italian political panorama." As part of the May 1947 crises , the PCI was excluded from government. Alcide De Gasperi ,
26400-428: The rise of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the centre-right's victory in key regions such as Lombardy , Veneto , Campania , Apulia , Calabria and Sicily (the centre-right was awarded of the majority premium in those regions, leaving the centre-left with just a handful of elects there). Consequently, the PD-led coalition was unable to govern alone because it lacked a majority in the Senate which has equal power to
26576-405: The shadow cabinet. The early months after the election were a difficult time for the PD and Veltroni, whose leadership was weakened by the growing influence of internal factions because of the popularity of Berlusconi and the dramatic rise of IdV in opinion polls. IdV became a strong competitor of the PD and the relations between the two parties became tense. In the 2008 Abruzzo regional election ,
26752-492: The social democratic Democrats of the Left (DS), successor of the Italian Communist Party and the Democratic Party of the Left , which was folded with several social democratic parties ( Labour Federation and Social Christians , among others) in 1998, as well as the largely Catholic -inspired Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy (DL), a merger of the Italian People's Party (heir of the Christian Democracy party's left wing), The Democrats and Italian Renewal in 2002. While
26928-415: The structure of their organisation, and the fact that they had been victims of systematic repression by the authorities; more than three quarters of the political prisoners between 1926 and 1943 were communists. Throughout the dictatorship, the party was able to maintain and feed a clandestine network, distribute propaganda leaflets and newspapers, and infiltrate fascist unions and youth organisations. In 1935,
27104-413: The support of about a third of the vote share during the 1970s. At the time, it was the largest Communist party in the Western world , with peak support reaching 2.3 million members in 1947, and peak share being 34.4% of the vote (12.6 million votes) in the 1976 Italian general election . The PCI was part of the Constituent Assembly of Italy and the Italian government from 1944 to 1947, when
27280-401: The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists —individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves. The continual advancements in technology play a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the 15th century,
27456-467: The time and the largest party at all in the whole of Western Europe with the Social Democratic Party of Germany . United States government sources said that the party was receiving $ 40–50 million per year from the Soviets when their investment in Italy was $ 5–6 million. Although the PCI relied on Soviet financial assistance more than any other Communist party supported by Moscow, declassified information shows this to be exaggerated. According to
27632-410: The title Divina , were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and
27808-421: The total population of the country. In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language. The main Italian-language newspapers published outside Italy are the L'Osservatore Romano ( Vatican City ), the L'Informazione di San Marino ( San Marino ), the Corriere del Ticino and the laRegione Ticino ( Switzerland ),
27984-603: The upcoming centre-left primary election , during which the PD–SEL–PSI joint candidate for prime minister in the 2013 general election would be selected. In the primary, the strongest challenge to Bersani was posed by a fellow Democrat, the 37-year-old mayor of Florence Matteo Renzi , a liberal moderniser, who had officially launched his leadership bid on 13 September 2012 in Verona , Veneto . Bersani launched his own bid on 14 October in his hometown Bettola , north-western Emilia . Other candidates included Nichi Vendola (SEL), Bruno Tabacci (ApI) and Laura Puppato (PD). In
28160-418: The vote and 31 seats. The party's score was virtually 15 percentage points up from five years before and the best result for an Italian party in a nationwide election since the 1958 general election , when Christian Democracy won 42.4%. The PD was also the largest national party within the Parliament in its 8th term . Following his party's success, Renzi was able to secure the post of High Representative of
28336-552: The vote, Renzi came second with 35.5%, followed by Vendola (15.6%), Puppato (2.6%) and Tabacci (1.4%). Bersani did better in the South while Renzi prevailed in Tuscany , Umbria and Marche . In the subsequent run-off, on 2 December, Bersani trounced Renzi 60.9% to 39.1% by winning in each and every single region but Tuscany, where Renzi won 54.9% of the vote. The PD secretary did particularly well in Lazio (67.8%), Campania (69.4%), Apulia (71.4%), Basilicata (71.7%), Calabria (74.4%), Sicily (66.5%) and Sardinia (73.5%). In
28512-419: The votes in the absence of much of the Left, who were unable to attend as a result of fascist controls and lack of Comintern support. Recourse to the Comintern against this evident manoeuvre had little effect. The PCd'I as conceived by the Left terminated. The organisation continued with the support of the Comintern and a new structure and leadership. In 1922, the newspaper L'Ordine Nuovo was closed and in 1924
28688-430: The working languages of the Council of Europe . It is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union (13% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom ) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million. Italian
28864-459: Was Bologna , which was held continuously by the PCI from 1945 onwards. Amongst other measures, the local PCI administration tackled urban problems with successful programmes of health for the elderly, nursery education and traffic reform, while also undertaking initiatives in housing and school meal provisions. Communist administrations at a local level helped to aid new businesses while also introducing innovative social reforms. From 1946 to 1956,
29040-411: Was able to absorb some votes from the parties of the far-left as also IdV did, but lost voters to the Union of the Centre (UdC), ending up with 33.2% of the vote, 217 deputies and 119 senators. After the election Veltroni, who was gratified by the result, formed a shadow cabinet . IdV, excited by its 4.4% which made it the fourth largest party in Parliament, refused to join both the Democratic groups and
29216-439: Was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent , only
29392-419: Was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy , but King Victor Emmanuel II did not agree to it. Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speak Corsican , which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan. Francization occurred in Nice case, and caused a near-disappearance of the Italian language as many of the Italian speakers in these areas migrated to Italy. In Corsica, on
29568-460: Was elected president as proposed by Renzi. On 20 January 2014, Cuperlo criticised the electoral reform proposed by Renzi in agreement with Berlusconi, but the proposal was overwhelmingly approved by the party's national board. The day after the vote, Cuperlo resigned from president. He was later replaced by Matteo Orfini , who hailed from the party's left-wing, but since then became more and more supportive of Renzi. After frequent calls by Renzi for
29744-483: Was founded in Livorno as the Communist Party of Italy ( Italian : Partito Comunista d'Italia , PCd'I ) on 21 January 1921, when it seceded from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), under the leadership of Amadeo Bordiga , Antonio Gramsci , and Nicola Bombacci . Outlawed during the Italian fascist regime, the party continued to operate underground and played a major role in the Italian resistance movement . The party's peaceful and national road to socialism, or
29920-571: Was in part due to the entrance of almost the whole Socialist Youth Federation ( Federazione Giovanile Socialista ). The party adopted a slim structure headed by a Central Committee of 15 members, five of whom were also in the Executive Committee (EC), namely Ambrogio Belloni, Nicola Bombacci, Amadeo Bordiga (EC), Bruno Fortichiari (EC), Egidio Gennari , Antonio Gramsci, Ruggero Grieco (EC), Anselmo Marabini, Francesco Misiano , Giovanni Parodi, Luigi Polano, Luigi Repossi (EC), Cesare Sessa, Ludovico Tarsia, and Umberto Terracini (EC). Since its formation,
30096-443: Was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro , an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of
30272-420: Was on top of the $ 3.5 million that the Soviet Union gave the PCI in 1971. The Soviets also provided additional funding through the use of front organisations providing generous contracts to PCI members. In 1969, Enrico Berlinguer , the PCI deputy national secretary and later secretary general, took part in the international conference of the communist parties in Moscow, where his delegation disagreed with
30448-430: Was removed from the party statute and the PCI adhered to the Eurocommunist trend, seeking independence from the Soviet Union and moving into a democratic socialist direction. In 1991, it was dissolved and re-launched as the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), which joined the Socialist International and the Party of European Socialists . The more radical members of the organisation formally seceded to establish
30624-406: Was replaced by the French. This was due to the annexation of the surrounding County of Nice to France following the Treaty of Turin (1860) . It formerly had official status in Montenegro (because of the Venetian Albania ), parts of Slovenia and Croatia (because of the Venetian Istria and Venetian Dalmatia ), parts of Greece (because of the Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands and by
30800-418: Was stronger in the Centre-North, trounced his opponents with 67.6% of the vote. Cuperlo, whose support was higher in the South, came second with 18.2% while Civati, whose message did well with northern urban and progressive voters, came third with 14.2%. On 15 December, Renzi, whose executive included many young people and a majority of women, was proclaimed secretary by the party's national assembly while Cuperlo
30976-412: Was the first former Socialist to lead the party. Epifani's mission was to lead the party toward a national convention in October. A few weeks after Epifani's election as secretary, the PD had a success in the 2013 local elections , winning in 69 comuni (including Rome and all the other 14 provincial capitals up for election) while the PdL won 22 and the M5S 1. The decision, on 9 November, that
#148851