Festa de ''l'Unità'' is an annual

social-democratic Social democracy is a Political philosophy, political, Social philosophy, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocati ...

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, originally organised by the

Italian Communist Party The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy. The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). ...

(PCI) to finance and spread its official newspaper ''

l'Unità ''l'Unità'' (, lit. 'the Unity') was an Italian newspaper, founded as the official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1924. It was supportive of that party's successor parties, the Democratic Party of the Left, Democrats of the ...

'' (''Unity''), and now organised by the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

. It is often misspelled ''Festa dell'unità'' ("Unity party"), since people forget where the name comes from. The event is generally organized as many separated happenings, usually one for each city, but where the PCI was more present, every local branch organized its own happening and often all of them collaborated to the organization of a large one as well. Typical aspects are political conferences, low-price or free typical foods, live music, prize games and street markets. Small events start already in July, but the main happenings take place in September. While the political aspect was preponderant in its first times, and is at times still important, it has developed with time into a social event for the youth (music events and discos) and elderly people (talking about the political adventures of their past and dancing swing). In some parts of Italy, especially in

Emilia-Romagna egl, Emigliàn (man) egl, Emiglièna (woman) rgn, Rumagnòl (man) rgn, Rumagnòla (woman) it, Emiliano (man) it, Emiliana (woman) or it, Romagnolo (man) it, Romagnola (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title ...

and

Tuscany Tuscany ( ; it, Toscana ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (''Firenze''). Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, art ...

, each and every small village seems to have its own "festa de ''l'Unità''", which is often the biggest social event of the year. In

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

and in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, they have developed into a two-week-long, tens-of-thousands-people-packed event that has little resemblance to the original political gathering, and are instead two of the biggest attractions for young people in the vicinity. Following the birth in 2007 of the Democratic Party the name of the ''Festa dell'Unità'' was changed, at a national level, to the ''Festa Democratica''. At the provincial level, however, and for important local party organisations, the traditional name ''"Festa de l'Unità"'' was retained, while elsewhere new hybrid appellations have been adopted such ''"Festa del Partito Democratico"'' or ''"Festa di lace name''.Se
contribution
of the distinguished journalist and

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

ist Antonio Padellaro. . The traditional name was restored in 2014, after the election of

Matteo Renzi Matteo Renzi (; born 11 January 1975) is an Italian politician who served as prime minister of Italy from 2014 to 2016. He has been a senator for Florence since 2018. Renzi has served as the leader of Italia Viva (IV) since 2019, having been ...

as new national Secretary of the party.

Sources

See also