"Combined with my love of Scotland" -- where she met her South African husband and got married -- "it was the perfect opportunity to do something for a country I really really love, and will hopefully lead to the undoing of Brexit as a result," said De Sanctis, who works as a freelance translator.
Describing the UK as "sort of a constitutional prison" -- a sentiment echoed on several recent posts on the 4,000-strong "Italians for Scottish Independence" Facebook page -- De Sanctis noted that the UK was able to leave the EU, whereas Scotland now is being told it can't even hold a vote on whether to leave the UK.
"The Supreme Court decision was disappointing, but it doesn't need to stop the independence movement, in a way it makes it stronger," she said.
Paris supporters celebrate the Auld Alliance
The Auld Alliance between France and Scotland dates back to the end of the 13th century, a notion of diplomatic, cultural and people-to-people ties that has endured more than 700 years.
So it seems only fitting that a group of Scottish independence supporters met outside a pub with the same name on the night of the UK Supreme Court ruling.
"I feel that pretty much everything I admired about Britain and England has gone down the drain over the last ten years or so -- when it comes to things like being a law-abiding country, the mother of democracy, integrity, an independent media, all this has disappeared," said Gilles Robel, an academic who teaches British studies at a university in Paris.