Angry at Prince Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy for calling Sardinians "stinky" and worse, a small town in Sardinia on Thursday officially declared itself a "Savoy-free zone".
Local officials in Bitti in northeast Sardinia are furious with the son of Italy's last king for making derogatory remarks about Sardinians in secretly taped phone conversations. The prince's phone was wiretapped as part of a corruption and prostitution probe which led to his arrest last month.
The Italian press subsequently published leaked transcripts of the wiretaps in which the prince was quoted as calling Sardinians "pieces of shit" and "stinky", apparently after they failed to repair his boat properly. The prince's wife Marina Doria later issued a public apology for her husband's remarks, stressing that they did not represent his "true feelings" about the islanders.
But residents in Bitti were unappeased and on Thursday, its local council passed a motion condemning the prince's comments.
It then banned any roads, squares or monuments from being dedicated to the Savoy family and ordered any that were already named after the former royals to be rechristened after "patriotic Sardinians".
The latter were described as any Sardinians who had died opposing the House of Savoy, who ruled the island from the early 18th century until Italian unification in the latter half of the 19th century when their rule was extended to the whole of Italy.
Vittorio Emanuele was imprisoned on June 16 in connection with a vice and corruption probe led by prosecutors in the southern city of Potenza. He was released a week later and is now under house arrest.
The 69-year-old prince is accused of recruiting prostitutes from Eastern Europe for a casino in Campione d'Italia, an Italian enclave in Switzerland. He is also accused of corruption in connection with the obtaining of licences and supply contracts for the illegal gambling machines procured by a Sicilian businessman, Rocco Migliardi.
The prince, who denies all wrongdoing, is accused of using his high-level contacts to help sell the video poker games to the Campione casino and countries including Libya. Prosecutors also suspect him of links with Mafia clans. Migliardi was also arrested together with the mayor of Campione d'Italia, Roberto Salmoiraghi; Gian Nicolino Narducci, the prince's secretary, and Venetian businessman Ugo Bonazza.
Another 24 people are under investigation for possible crimes ranging from corruption, extortion and money laundering to blackmail and the aiding and abetting of alleged criminal activity. Former Bulgarian prime minister and ex-child king Simeon
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who is Vittorio Emanuele's cousin, is also involved in the investigation.
Italy's former royal family was banished in 1946 following a national referendum introducing the Republic, their name tainted by the links of Emanuele's grandfather, Vittorio Emanuele III, with Fascism.
Vittorio Emanuele was nine years old when his father King Umberto II and mother Maria Jose' went into exile in Portugal.
The male members of the Savoy family were subsequently banned from entering Italy by the 1948 Constitution. But in November 2002, the Italian parliament lifted the ban.
Although the Savoy family now regularly visit Italy, Prince Vittorio Emanuele has maintained his Swiss residency while his son lives in Paris. The prince's popularity in Italy has fluctuated. His long campaign to get the Savoy ban lifted was damaged by his trial and eventual acquittal on manslaughter charges in the 1978 death of a young German tourist killed by a hunting gun following a quarrel at a Corsican marina.
