Town squares across northern Italy are now (relatively) deserted, as quarantine measures and fears about the COVID-19 coronavirus take hold. But time and again in the run-up to the regional elections in Emilia-Romagna at the end of January, the squares were packed with ‘Sardines’, as we mobilised against Matteo Salvini’s campaign to unseat the centre-left governor in a region that has been a left-wing stronghold since the end of the Second World War.