Sicilian Nationalism

Sicilian nationalism is a movement in the autonomous Italian region of Sicily, as well as the Sicilian diaspora, which seeks greater autonomy or outright independence from Italy, and/or promotes further inclusion of the Sicilian identity, culture, history, and linguistic variety.

Various separatist and autonomist movements in Sicily have received support from the political left and centre.[citation needed] Historically, the most notable party with a Sicilian nationalist platform was the separatist Sicilian Independence Movement, which had four seats in the Italian Senate and nine seats in the Italian Chamber of Deputies at their peak in the mid-1940s. Many Sicilian separatists drew their motives from Sicily's independent past as the Sicilian Emirate when Sicily was under its own self governing rule.

In contemporary Sicily, the largest regionalist party has been the autonomist Party of the Sicilians, part of the greater Movement for the Autonomies, which governed Sicily under the presidency of Raffaele Lombardo from 2008-2012. The left-wing sicilianism, once active through some Sicilian socialists, Antonino Varvaro's Movimento Indipendentista Democratico Repubblicano ("Republican Democratic Sicilian Independence Movement", MISDR) and the Communist Party of Sicily, is now represented mainly by the Sicilian Socialist Party.