This Europe: Who will be crowned queen of the north country fair?

The putative north Italian nation of Padania, invented by Umberto Bossi, Italy's Minister for Reforms, is unusual among the nations of the world in its ethereality.

Though declared independent on 15 September 1996, Padania has no clear border, no common language and no history. It has a flag – a green Celtic star on a white background – but it is crowded out by the 14 regional flags of the separate "northern leagues" of which Padania is an amalgamation. Currency and identity cards have been designed but are not in circulation.

What it does have is a beauty contest, and on Saturday the new Miss Padania, flanked by Miss Sole delle Alpi ("Sun of the Alps") and Miss Camicia Verde ("Green Blouse") will be crowned in Milan, the fifth such event in Padania's non-history.

Whether a serious number of people in northern Italy are even faintly interested in breaking away is highly debatable, but the threat of leading Italy's richest regions out of the Republic and into his Promised Land has made Mr Bossi, formerly a labourer, guitarist and maths tutor, one of the most powerful men in the country. So of course, Miss Padania is far more than a joke.

"The selection of participants in Miss Padania has criteria very different from other such contests," the organisers insist. "There is a way of being and feeling in the north, a northern mode of femininity, quite different from that of the Mediterranean." The trouble is, and it's the trouble with most things Padanian, Italy keeps on breaking through. So the literature on the event is in Italian – the only tongue by which the people of the North can speak to each other. One of the sponsors is Alitalia. And so on.

So to try to impart some distinctive reality, they go to extremes bordering on the parodic. The incumbent Miss Padania has blue eyes and blonde plaits and, like most of this year's contestants would not look out of place in a Wagner production. And to emphasise Padania's mythical Celtic roots, one of the judges attended last year in a kilt and no knickers.