Bossi, at the funeral in the Pontida monastery only family, friends and guests

Only family, friends and guests will be able to attend the funeral of Umberto Bossi, scheduled to take place tomorrow at 12 noon at the San Giacomo monastery in Pontida. There are in fact about 400 places in the abbey, which overlooks Piazza del Giuramento. From the League they announce that no ceremony is planned and that there are very few reserved seats. It will be a simple ceremony, and no political speeches are planned in the churchyard. On the way out, a choir of Alpine soldiers will intone the 'Va, pensiero'. The ceremony will be celebrated by the abbot of the monastery. The square will be partially closed in view of the presence of many institutional figures, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Fi secretary and deputy prime minister Antonio Tajani, the presidents of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies Ignazio La Russa and Lorenzo Fontana, Lega Nord secretary Matteo Salvini, Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, who was entrusted with organising the funeral by the Senatur's family, Minister Roberto Calderoli and obviously all the governors and leaders of the Lega Nord, from Attilio Fontana of Lombardy to Luca Zaia. According to reports, Secretary Matteo Salvini will return to Rome after the funeral to vote in the evening for the referendum on justice.

Limited seats and security requirements will not allow access to the media, which will be given a dedicated area outside the church, with audio and images. The ceremony, the League has announced, will be broadcast live on the party's social channels. Those who wish to participate in the ceremony will be able to set up in the driveway about one hundred metres in front of the church. In order to allow those who wish to attend the funeral, a big screen will be set up and live streaming will also be provided. Outside, an area will be reserved for journalists who will not be able to enter the abbey.

Matteo Luigi Bianchi will take over the Chamber seat left by Umberto Bossi. Born in Milan in 1979, Bianchi, a candidate in the Lombardy 2 multi-nominal constituency, was a deputy in the last legislature. 'Without Umberto Bossi and his Lega,' Bianchi wrote on Facebook in a long remembrance of the Lega leader, 'my story would have been different. As different as life would be without that family with whom you grow up, with whom you quarrel, with whom you get passionate and with whom you build something that remains'. Bossi, he said, 'was our leader. In my bedroom there was always a picture of him, with a cigar in his mouth'. He recounted how he started when he was 19. "I worked hard, with passion, with dedication. Until I became mayor, driven by a single motivation: to do the good of my land. This was Bossi's greatest teaching: rootedness, responsibility, belonging. Then came the illness. The real fear of losing our leader too soon. And then that voice came back, on Radio Padania. We were there, listening to it, in silence. And we were moved by hearing the voice of a wounded lion, but still alive, still ready to fight. The hard times came, too. The falls, the changes, the evolutions. And within all this, for me, also the burden today of being 'the first of the non-elected'". Because the truth is simple: none of us can ever be worthy to take over from Bossi. No one can really be worthy to pick up his legacy; perhaps, we should have the courage to leave that void, guarded exclusively by his memory'.

"How will Umberto Bossi be remembered in the history books? As a barbarian. A definition that suited him perfectly. After all, he was the great pickpocket of the First Republic: the noose in Parliament was exhibited by the leghists,' says Pier Ferdinando Casini in an interview with Repubblica. Casini is keen to emphasise 'his anti-fascism'. Moreover, 'he was of a unique cunning. The time Berlusconi invited him to Sardinia to iron out some differences in the majority Bossi accepted the invitation, but to avoid making himself an accomplice he showed up in a tank top. A look that gave the Cavaliere hives'. Bossi 'interpreted a certain anti-Southernism, the intolerance towards the Roman bureaucracy typical of Lombard-Venetian Legaismo. He saw the state as an enemy' but 'it was not racism, in his soul it was not. Bossi in private was capable of great self-irony'.

"Umberto Bossi was a revolutionary. Had he been a bourgeois, he would have taken very different positions when he found himself enjoying great popular consensus. Instead he remained himself,' says Gianfranco Fini in an interview with Il Giornale. 'Politically he was very incorrect. Iconoclastic. His sometimes obscene language was part of his message'. Fini says that in 2001 the centre-right came back united, won the elections, and 'Bossi and I both entered the government. So we got to know each other better. Humanly he was very nice. An absolutely clean-cut guy, far from hypocritical. And that year we wrote the famous Bossi-Fini law on immigration together. It was a good law and the Left when it went into government did not overturn it'.