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lol, are they not Italian?
Sicily (which would include the south end of the boot) would probably have the same label if it weren't less funny that way. They were all distinct kingdoms and cultures for most of their history. the modern unified Italian identity is quite young by European standards, about as old as the US civil war
Isn't that technically true about all of Italy?
I mean, it's the same with Germany and we joke about how Bavaria isn't really part of Germany so I don't disagree with you
Yeah, but the northern part of the peninsula is broadly more culturally uniform than Sicily and Sardinia, and while the exact borders fluctuated a lot and was mainly made of city-states for a long time, there had been past kingdoms that unified the North peninsula much more recently than either of those two regions. "Italy" as a term really only referred to the northern peninsula, for the most part, for well over a thousand years.
Thanks for the context!
It's a somewhat controversial context. Sardinia is a LOT more vocal about their unique identity and isolationistic vocations than Sicily, and the Italian unification has been the subject to an abundant amount of revisionism mostly as a bitter consequence of the real or percieved gaps in economical development between the north and the south.
Unification was very much desired by Italian intellectuals across the country, the general population didn't have that much relevant say into it, but truth be told the unification campaign to annex the south started from Sicily climbing up toward Rome.
Of course it's all a lot more complex, but it can be argued that Italy was more united back than that in later, more recent, stages, for various not entirely devoid of opaque political interests, reasons.
See: this image being funny but also, well, perpetuating an unhealthy stereotype.
They're small, oily fish.