On April 12, 1984, when notary Franca Bellorini authenticated the founding document of the Autonomist League of Lombardy, the core group of the future Lega Nord consisted only of a small family circle around founder Umberto Bossi. There was his wife, Manuela Marrone, his brother-in-law Pierangelo Brivio, his sister Angela, and even his driver, Pino Babbini. The first meetings took place at Marrone’s home, and for most of the 1980s (the first official congress was held in 1989), this remained a “party of bill stickers.”

At its head was its sole leader, Bossi, who surrounded himself with a small “magic circle” of acolytes. Bossi was “the mastermind and the entertainer; he was the public speaker on every occasion and event in Lombardy” (Italy’s most populous region, around Milan) “where he met supporters and handed out flyers and copies of the party’s newspaper to be circulated and put in mailboxes.”

Bossi had entered regionalist activism in the late 1970s, and in March 1982 published the first issue of Lombardia Autonomista. In these years, this was still one of Italy’s many small, almost family-run parties — hastily assembled in time for electoral campaigns and usually disappearing a few years afterward. Yet today, amid wider volatility, the Lega Nord is Italy’s longest-running party.