Until the so-called warm autumn (the workers struggles in 1969), the North East of Italy (Triveneto) was in the social imagination of contemporary Italy as an icon of the society organized around the parish and its catholic traditional values and, at the same time, around the Fordist factory (such as the Michelin in Trento and the petrochemical pole of Porto Marghera) or the large family-owned company characterized by the symbiotic relationship with the land and its typical identity (such as Marzotto in Valdagno). The Christian democrat local political power was directly expressed by this economic and cultural milieu. Since the mid- sixties the speedy makeover from the traditional economy into the "industrial districts" typical of the post- Fordist system had a strong impact on North East reality. Furthermore the presence of Faculty of Sociology at University of Trento, that is one of the national leading doctrinaire schools of thought of the 1968’s Protest movements, caused a radial propagation of the student and workers' demonstrations in this area. The shock wave of these phenomena overwhelmed an entire political class, investing strongly also its social background. This led to a series of ambivalent effects: in parallel with a closer alliance between left and progressive Catholicism, a conservative Catholic world claimed a stronger ethnic and regional identity, less identified with the religious observance and more closely linked to the defense of its privileges insured by small and medium enterprises. This paper examines this transition phase through a multiple-levels-of-analysis approach (economic, political and religious) from the point of view of the trade unions, parties and ecclesial realities that were the traditional basis of consensus and legitimacy for the Christian democrat party.
