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      Theme Park’s Selective History Appeals to a New Spanish Nationalism

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      Puy du Fou España has drawn visitors with spectacular shows about Spanish history. But part of its success lies in what goes unsaid.Moving through the darkened holds of a replica of Christopher Columbus’s ship, visitors on a recent afternoon marveled at the tangle of compasses, cordage and barrels. They stumbled as the ship swang and creaked with the swell of the sea. At last, a voice shouted “Land!” and the white sands of America appeared.“Our journey has changed the world. May it be for the greater glory of God,” Columbus was then heard telling Queen Isabella I of Castile. Referring to America’s Indigenous people, he added, “I apologize in advance if iniquities or injustices are committed.”And so ends one of the shows at Puy du Fou España, a historical theme park that is all the rage in Spain today, with over a million visitors expected this year.The popularity of the park has come as a surprise in a country that has long been shy about celebrating its history. Nationalist sentiments were largely taboo after the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, who died in the 1970s.But the time that has elapsed since Franco and the recent secessionist movement in Catalonia, which threatened to fracture the country, have helped spur a resurgent nationalism in Spain. It may now give a lift to conservatives and their far-right allies when Spaniards vote in a general election on Sunday.The theme park expects more than a million visitors this year.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesThe park is filled with hallowed symbols like the cross and the flag, and most of the shows feature conquests and glorious battles to defend the country. The more questionable aspects of Spain’s past — from the bloody conquest of America that followed Columbus’s trip to Franco’s repressive rule — do not appear in more than 10 productions.“What we’re trying to do is present a history that’s not divisive,” said Erwan de la Villéon, the head of the park, noting that historical taboos continued to run through Spanish society.But the approach has raised concerns about the history that the park is highlighting instead — pageantry that emphasizes Spain’s Catholic identity and its unity against foreign invaders — and how it may shape visitors’ views.“This is a selective history,” said Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, a historian at Madrid’s Complutense University who has visited the park twice. “You can’t or shouldn’t teach that to people. History is not gratuitous — it carries major political weight.”The park was launched in 2019 after the founders of the original Puy du Fou in France, the country’s second most-visited theme park after Disneyland Paris, decided to take their concept abroad.Historians have long criticized the French park as promoting nationalist views. It similarly glosses over some of the most painful episodes in France’s past, such as its history of colonialism, and highlights the country’s Catholic identity.The founder of the French park, Philippe de Villiers, whom Mr. de la Villéon called “a mentor” and “a genius,” is a prominent far-right politician.Erwan de la Villéon, the head of Puy du Fou España, said he had sought to find unifying aspects of Spain’s history, and it was “too soon” to mention Franco’s dictatorship.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesMr. de la Villéon denied that the Spanish park promoted any political line. But he called supporters of Catalan independence his “enemies” and railed against the former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a Socialist who passed a memory law to honor victims of the Civil War and Franco’s repressive rule.Spain, Mr. de la Villéon said, proved an ideal place for a new park because of the country’s “great historical trajectory” of invasions and conquests. He chose to build it in Toledo, he said, because the ancient city south of Madrid once stood at the crossroads of Europe’s kingdoms.There, some 200 million euros, about $220 million, have been invested to create an impressive complex of castles, farms and medieval villages filled with terra-cotta vases and whitewashed houses with exposed beams.But it is the historical stage productions, performed in large amphitheaters, that are the big draw.“The Last Song” takes place in a rotating auditorium and follows El Cid, a knight and warlord who became Spain’s greatest medieval hero, as he fights enemies appearing successively behind large panels that open onto the semicircular stage. In “Toledo’s Dream,” the flagship evening show retracing 15 centuries of Spanish history, Columbus’s life-size ship emerges from a lake on which characters were dancing moments before.Supporters of the far-right Vox party at rally in Barcelona, Spain, in July. The party is expected to increase its vote in Sunday’s general election.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesBoth shows received the IAAPA Brass Ring award for “Best Theater Production,” considered one of the international entertainment industry’s most prestigious prizes. On a recent afternoon, visitors were ecstatic about the experience.“Great — it’s just great. I didn’t know that history could be so appealing,” said Vicente Vidal, 65, as he exited a show featuring Visigoths fighting Romans. In the park, children could be seen playing sword-fighting, shouting, “We’ll fight for our country!”Mr. de la Villéon, who is French, said the success of the park reflected a desire among Spanish people to reclaim their past. “People want to have roots, that’s the first need that the park’s success reveals,” he said. “You come here and you think, ‘Man, it’s cool to be Spanish.’”Modern Spain has an uneasy relationship with its history because of chapters such as the Inquisition and the colonization of the Americas, said Jesús Carrobles, head of Toledo’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Historical Sciences, who was consulted on the park project.The Cross of Burgundy, on prominent display at the park, is a longstanding symbol of the Spanish monarchy that has also been embraced by some on the far right.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“The park allows you to reclaim an idea of your past that you can be proud of,” Mr. Carrobles said. “A beautiful past, a past that’s worth remembering.”But it has also proved to be a selective past.The shows depict Isabella I as a visionary and a merciful queen, making no mention of her order to expel Jews during the Inquisition. The Aztecs appear once in a dance scene, but their deadly fate at the hands of the conquistadors is omitted.Perhaps most telling is the park’s treatment of the Spanish Civil War, whose legacy continues to divide the country. The conflict is only vaguely mentioned at the end of “Toledo’s Dream,” when a woman mourns her brothers who “killed each other.” The scene lasts one minute, out of a 75-minute performance, and the show ends without mentioning the subsequent four-decade dictatorship of Franco.“Too soon to talk about it,” said Mr. de la Villéon, noting that memories of Francoist Spain were still raw.Some 200 million euros, or about $220 million, have been invested in creating a medieval atmosphere.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“It’s a very consensual show, which has glossed over the questionable aspects of Spanish history,” said Jean Canavaggio, a French specialist in Cervantes who reviewed the script of “Toledo’s Dream.” He added that the park could not have succeeded had it taken a “critical look” at Spanish history, given how politically fraught that remains.Mr. de la Villéon said that he had looked for events illustrating Spain’s unity. In Puy du Fou España, they revolve around a central element: Catholicism.Nearly every show features clerics and soldiers dedicating their fights to God. In “The Mystery of Sorbaces,” a Visigoth king converts to Catholicism as his troops fall to their knees and a church rises from underground, to the sound of emotional music.Mr. de la Villéon — who makes no secret of his faith and had a small chapel set up in the park — argued that Catholicism was “the matrix” of Spanish history.A replica of Christopher Columbus’s caravel. Catholicism is central to the park’s shows.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesMr. Gómez Bravo, the historian, who specializes in the Civil War and Franco, said the park presented the Catholic reconquest of Muslim-ruled Spain as the foundation of Spanish unity. “This a very politically charged idea because it was promoted above all by Franco’s regime,” he said.Still, many in the Spanish park seemed to embrace the park’s mission.“Spain is a great country!” said Conchita Tejero, a woman in her 60s, who was seated with three friends at a large wooden table in a medieval-style tavern adorned with imperial flags. “This park is a way to reclaim our history.”Her friend, Esteban Garces, a supporter of the far-right Vox party, said he saw the park as a counterpoint to the “other history” that portrayed Spain as needing to make amends for its past.Exiting the park after nightfall, Mr. Garces said he had been delighted with “Toledo’s Dream.”“The true history,” he said.The idea that Spanish unity was founded on the Catholic reconquest was “charged,” one historian said, because that was the narrative promoted under Franco.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times More

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      Spanish Vote Threatens Efforts to Recover Franco’s Victims

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      Spain’s left-wing government has tried to accelerate exhumations of mass graves left from the dictatorship. If it wins Sunday’s election, the right may end that.When she first heard of a project to exhume and identify the remains of hundreds of Civil War victims — her grandfather possibly among them — Ángela Raya Fernández said she was “filled with hope, a lot of hope.”Ever since she was a girl, she had heard stories about how her father’s father, José Raya Hurtado, was executed during the Spanish Civil War, his body ignominiously dumped in a ravine by forces loyal to Gen. Francisco Franco. She had only ever known him from black-and-white photos: round glasses, a receding hairline and a resolute gaze.“We’ve long hoped that somebody could find him and give him a dignified burial,” said Ms. Raya, a soft-spoken, 62-year-old librarian.But with general elections Sunday and polls predicting a right-wing victory, Ms. Raya and her family, along with thousands of others, fear that years of efforts to find their loved ones may suddenly grind to a halt.A photo of José Raya Hurtado, who is believed to have been executed during the Spanish Civil War, is affixed to a tree in Viznar, Spain.The conservative Popular Party, which grew partly from Francoist roots, has pledged to repeal a memory law passed last autumn under the current Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, aimed at accelerating the exhumations. A possible alliance between the conservatives and the far-right Vox party, which has long opposed attempts to address the crimes of the past, has only heightened these fears.“It would be a catastrophe,” Ms. Raya said, “a huge step backward.”The to and fro over the memory law reflects how the traumas of Spain’s 1936-39 Civil War and Franco’s subsequent dictatorship, which ended with his death in 1975, still divide the country today.To some, Franco, a nationalist, consolidated Spain’s postwar economic growth and served as an anti-Communist bulwark. To many others, his rule was one of repression, marked by mass executions, exile for thousands and the abduction of children.An estimated 100,000 people were executed by Franco’s supporters during and after the Civil War, and buried in more than 2,000 mass graves scattered across the country.Some 2,200 people were shot by Franco’s firing squads against a wall in Paterna that is still pockmarked with bullet holes.No one dared disturb those sites in a country where Franco’s legacy has long been left unexamined. Conservatives, in particular, have argued that exhumations would only reopen old wounds.For the left, the silence has been anything but therapeutic, even enraging. During the dictatorship, Spaniards were forbidden to talk about the killings. An amnesty law, passed in 1977, hoped to draw a line under the crimes of the past, but in effect made forgetting a crucial part of the effort to heal a divided nation in transition to democracy.“It was a culture of silence,” said Agustín Gómez Jiménez, 49, a health worker who recounted how his father had long refused to even show a picture of his own father, executed in 1936.Mr. Gómez said it took his sister rummaging through their father’s belongings to finally find some pictures, five years ago. One of them shows their grandfather on a beach, holding hands with his small, soon-to-be-orphaned son. “I have goose bumps just thinking my father hid the photos. He was so traumatized,” he said.Agustín Gómez Jiménez and his sister Maria Del Mar Gómez with a portrait of their grandfather who was executed in 1936.The first efforts to deal with the mass graves began in 2007, when a center-left prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, passed a “law of historical memory” that lent government support to exhumations.But the legislation was slow to take effect and when the conservative Popular Party took power in 2011, the conservatives promptly defunded the law.It took another decade, the commitment of Spanish left-wing-controlled regions and last year’s law — which created a census and a national DNA bank to help locate and identify the remains — for the exhumations to finally gain momentum.Such efforts are evident in Viznar, a small, whitewashed village perched in the mountains overlooking Granada. For three years, a team of archaeologists has been digging in the ravine where Ms. Raya’s and Mr. Gómez’s grandfathers were buried along with about 280 other victims, including possibly the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.On a recent morning, the researchers were hunched over a 3-by-13-foot pit, using brushes and small blades to delicately remove the earth covering eight skeletons. Their spines and femurs were interlaced, a sign that bodies had been dumped one upon the other. Several skulls were pierced by round holes, evidence that the victims had been shot in the head.Researchers excavate skeletons in a mass grave in Viznar.“It’s a page of our history that was blank and that we’re writing today,” said Francisco Carrión Méndez, the archaeologist coordinating the project, standing beside the grave. Many relatives, he explained, want to find their loved ones and rebury them because “their dignity was stolen.”Mr. Carrión pointed to photos of the victims that families had hung on nearby pines: a university rector with slicked-back hair; an imposing-looking barmaid. “They shouldn’t be forgotten,” he said.Not everyone agrees. At the entrance of the ravine, a sign paying tribute to the victims has been defaced by graffiti reading “¡Viva Franco!” To which someone responded: “Fascism must not be discussed, it must be destroyed.”“In Spain,” García Lorca once wrote, “the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.”To date, the remains of 75 people have been recovered in Viznar. The passage of time and lack of records about the killings make identification difficult, so researchers are using bone samples to perform DNA tests in a Granada laboratory. The first results are expected this fall.The small town of Viznar, where a team of archaeologists has been digging in a ravine with about 280 victims, including possibly the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.But many relatives worry it will be too late.“Who’s responsible for the samples? Who?” Francisca Pleguezuelos Aguilar, 73, anxiously asked a perplexed forensic expert during a recent visit to the laboratory.Pointing at a window behind which two lab assistants in white overalls were showing the DNA testing process to families, Ms. Pleguezuelos said she worried that the conservatives would block the study of the samples if they win this week’s general elections.She wasn’t the only one afraid. “They’ll paralyze all the projects,” said María José Sánchez, a great-niece of the barmaid who was killed, her eyes swollen with tears. “The curtain is about to fall again.”A spokesperson for the Popular Party suggested that exhumations could continue after the elections, saying that “relatives have the right to claim the bodies of their loved ones.”But many relatives said they remembered how Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s previous conservative prime minister, boasted of having cut public funding for the 2007 memory law to zero.Researchers identify bodies in Viznar, where the remains of 75 people have been discovered so far.The possibility of a national alliance between the conservative Popular Party and the hard-right Vox party — which polls suggest will be the only way for the right to secure a majority in Parliament — has only exacerbated the fears of victims’ families.In recent weeks, they have been looking anxiously at local governing coalitions forged between the two parties following regional elections in May: they almost always included plans to clamp down on memory projects.“The central government is our last bulwark, our Alamo fortress,” said Matías Alonso Blasco, who represents families in the Valencia region, where the right recently took political control. “If it falls, it’s over.”Several representatives of Vox declined to comment for this article.In the Valencia region, the new right-wing coalition said, “the norms that attack reconciliation in historical matters will be repealed.” Many took it as a reference to the 2017 local memory law that has helped excavate about two-thirds of the area’s 600 mass graves.Many of the bodies were recovered from the cemetery of Paterna, a suburb of Valencia. There, some 2,200 people were shot by Franco’s firing squads against a wall that is still pockmarked with bullet holes. So numerous are the mass graves that they have been given numbers.Standing between two wooden signs marked 100 and 101, Marilyn Ortíz Bono said the body of her grandfather had yet to be identified because the remains found in the grave where he is believed to have been buried had decayed too much.Ms. Ortíz said that shortly after Vox gained power in the Valencia region, she sent a sample of her DNA to a state-funded laboratory, hoping to get the identification process completed before the general elections.“I haven’t heard back from them,” she said. “I’m afraid I never will.”An old Spanish Republican flag lies on a mass grave in the cemetery in Paterna. More

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      Far-Right Party Gaining in Spain

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      As Spain prepares for elections, some liberal European politicians fear that the hard-right Vox party could become the first right-wing party since the Franco era to enter Spain’s national government.Last month, after Spain’s conservative and hard-right parties crushed the left in local elections, the winners in Elche, a small southeastern town known for an ancient sculpture and shoe exports, signed an agreement with consequences for the future of Spain — and the rest of Europe.The candidate from the conservative Popular Party had a chance to govern, but he needed the hard-right Vox party, which, in return for its support during council votes, received the deputy mayor position and a new administrative body to defend the traditional family. They inked their deal under the cross of the local church.“This coalition model could be a good model for the whole of Spain,” said Pablo Ruz Villanueva, Elche’s new mayor, referring to upcoming national elections on July 23, which most polls suggest will oust the liberal prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. The new deputy mayor from Vox, Aurora Rodil Martínez, went further: “My party will do everything that’s necessary to make that happen.”If Ms. Rodil’s wish comes true, with Vox joining a coalition with more moderate conservatives, it would become the first right-wing party since the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to enter the national government.The rise of Vox is part of an increasing trend of hard-right parties surging in popularity and, in some cases, gaining power by entering governments as junior partners.People walking through the old part of Elche, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesThe parties have differences but generally fear the economic ramifications of globalization, and say that their countries will lose their national identities to migration, often from non-Christian or nonwhite-majority countries, but also to an empowered European Union that they believe looks after only the elites. Their steady advances have added urgency to a now pressing debate among liberals over how to outflank a suddenly more influential right.Some argue that the hard right needs to be marginalized, as was the case for more than a half-century after World War II. Others fear that the hard right has grown too large to be ignored and that the only choice is to bring them into governing in the hopes of normalizing them.In Sweden, the government now depends on the parliamentary votes of a party with neo-Nazi roots, and has given it some sway in policymaking. In Finland, where the right has ascended into the governing coalition, the nationalist Finns party has risked destabilizing it, with a key minister from that far-right party resigning last month after it emerged that he had made “Heil Hitler” jokes.On Friday, the Dutch government led by Mark Rutte, a conservative and the Netherlands’ longest serving prime minister, collapsed because more centrist parties in his coalition considered his efforts to curb migration too harsh. Mr. Rutte has had to guard his right flank against surging populists and a longstanding hard-right party.In Italy, the far right has taken power on its own. But so far, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, politically reared in parties born from the ashes of Fascism and a close ally of Spain’s Vox, has governed more moderately than many in Europe expected — bolstering some analysts’ argument that the reality of governing can be a moderating force.Elsewhere, hard-right parties are breaking through in countries where they had recently seemed contained.Elche’s new mayor, Pablo Ruz Villanueva, left, and deputy mayor, Aurora Rodil Martínez, in their office last month in Elche, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesIn France, the once fringe party of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen has become an established force as entrenched anger against President Emmanuel Macron has newly exploded over issues like pension changes and the integration and policing of the country’s minority communities. He is not running again and the election is years away, but liberals across Europe shuddered when she passed him in some recent polls.And in Germany, where the right has long been taboo, economic uncertainty and a new surge in arrivals by asylum seekers has helped resurrect the far-right Alternative for Germany party. It is now the leading party in the formerly Communist eastern states, according to polls, and is even gaining popularity in the wealthier and more liberal west.While the parties in different countries do not have identical proposals, they generally want to close the doors to and cut benefits off for migrants; hit the pause, or reverse, button when it comes to L.G.B.T.Q. rights; and stake out more protectionist trade policies. Some are suspicious of NATO and dubious about climate change and sending arms to Ukraine.Supporters of the hard-right Italian politician Giorgia Meloni in Rome before the general elections that she won in 2022.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesIn a seeming recognition that the continent’s political complexion is changing, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in Spain this past week that the European Union needed to deliver tangible results in order to counter “extremist” forces.In Spain, where the conservative Popular Party has a good chance of finishing first in the coming election, Esteban González Pons, a leading party official, said that bringing hard-right parties, like Vox, into government was a way to neutralize them. But he acknowledged that strategy carried risks.“First, the bad scenario: We can legitimize Vox,” he said.“Then, there is a second chance: We can normalize Vox,” he said, adding that if they governed well, “Vox will be another party, a conservative party inside of the system.”For now, the situation is fluid and there are indications that Mr. Sánchez and his leftist allies are gaining support. Vox also appears to be losing ground as the Sánchez campaign and well-known artists and liberals throughout Spain have focused on the threat of conservatives bringing Vox into the government.A Pride flag hanging on a house in Náquera, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesSpain seemed in recent years to be a bright spot for liberals. Under Mr. Sánchez, Spain has kept inflation low, reduced tensions with separatists in Catalonia, and increased the growth rate, pensions and the minimum wage. He is also generally popular in the European Union.But the alliance between Mr. Sánchez and deeply polarizing separatists and far-left forces has fed resentment among many voters.Mr. González Pons, a leading official of the Popular Party, does not think that worries about Vox possibly joining forces with his conservatives are entirely off base. “We are pro-European and Vox is not,” he said, adding that Vox “would prefer something like a general Brexit, for all the countries to recover their own sovereignty.” He said Vox had views on gay rights and violence against women that “are red lines for us.”Those lines started to show as the new leaders of Elche sat on leather armchairs in the mayor’s office last week and sought to put up a united front. Mr. Ruz, the mayor from the conservative Popular Party, and his deputy from Vox, Ms. Rodil, took turns bashing the prime minister. But when pressed, the mayor acknowledged that his party recognized gay marriage, and that he was queasier about hard-right parties like Alternative for Germany than his “partner.” Still, he said, the Popular Party and Vox had similar voters, just different approaches to “implementation.”Far-right supporters of Spain’s Vox party during a recent rally in Barcelona.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“Can I say something regarding that?” Ms. Rodil said with a coy smile. “We have a stance that is maybe a little firmer.” Vox, she said, believes in the “sovereignty of nations” and would like to make it more difficult for women to have abortions, positions that she said some people in the mayor’s party “do not defend.” She said the “ambiguous” stances of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Popular Party’s leader, were “worrying.”Many, instead, are worried about Vox.“We have seen populism, supported by the center-right, grow in small towns,” said Carlos González Serna, the former socialist mayor of Elche, who lost the election. He said that instead of cordoning off the extreme right, mainstream conservatives had given it an “umbilical cord” of legitimacy.The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, split from the Popular Party amid a slush-fund scandal in 2013. The party’s popularity grew in 2018 as more migrants arrived by sea to Spain than to any other European country. The nationalist Vox was also well positioned to exploit a backlash to the Catalonian independence movement.But Vox has also found support among Spaniards unhappy with their country’s progressive shift on climate change and social issues, including gay rights and feminism. Their campaign billboards have included candidates throwing L.G.B.T.Q., feminist and other symbols in the trash. In the town of Náquera, near Elche, the newly elected mayor from the Vox party has ordered the removal of Pride flags from municipal buildings.Migrants having breakfast on a rooftop in 2018 in Barcelona. That year, more migrants arrived by sea to Spain than to any other European country.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesOne resident, a 45-year-old truck driver named Maximo Ibañez, said he voted for Vox because the party spoke clearly, but also because he feels that Spain’s pioneering laws to explicitly protect women against gender-based violence — complete with special courts and tougher sentences — discriminate against men.“It’s women who have the right to presumption of innocence here,” he said.One of Vox’s regional leaders has joked that some women were too unattractive to be gang raped, and another said that “women are more belligerent because they don’t have penises.”Ms. Rodil, the new deputy mayor of Elche with Vox, said that her party had no quarrel with women, just with the notion that domestic violence should be seen through gender-based ideology, and that a man, “just for being a man, is bad, that he has a gene that makes him violent.”She argued that Mr. Sánchez’s government had endangered women with botched legislation that had the potential to let sex offenders out of jail. Mr. Sánchez has apologized for the inadvertent effects of the so-called yes-is-yes law, which was intended to categorize all non-consensual sex as rape, but which, through changes to sentencing requirements, has risked reducing jail time or setting free potentially hundreds of sex offenders.As many in Europe say the time has come to start taking right-wing parties more seriously, some voters in Elche regretted not having taken Vox seriously enough.“I didn’t think that they were going to form a government and the fact that they have has surprised me,” Isabel Chinchilla, 67, said in a plaza that features three statues of the Virgin Mary. “I will vote in the national elections so that this doesn’t happen again, because they are very reactionary in their vision of society.”Maximo Ibañez, right, a truck driver who said he voted for Vox, at a bar in Náquera, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesRachel Chaundler More

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      Once Scorned, Far Right Secures Foothold in Spanish Cities

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      Local alliances between the center-right Popular Party and the far-right Vox may foreshadow a broader coalition agreement at the national level.Spain’s far right took office in a string of Spanish cities and in a powerful region over the weekend by forging coalition agreements with the moderate right, in a move that may foreshadow a broader alliance to govern the country after next month’s general elections.The agreements came about three weeks after the center-right Popular Party crushed Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing coalition in regional and local elections. To secure control of dozens of cities, the Popular Party struck coalition deals with the far-right Vox, which also performed well, embracing part of the party’s nationalist, anti-migrant agenda.Both parties will now govern together in some 25 cities of more than 30,000 residents, including five regional capitals, giving Vox, a party once considered anathema by most voters, crucial political leverage. They have also teamed up to run the wealthy Valencia region, which accounts for 10 percent of Spain’s population.“It’s something completely new, both in terms of extent and depth,” Sandra León, a political analyst at Carlos III University in Madrid, said of the alliances. “It opens up a new path, a new period in the right-wing bloc.”The growing popularity of Vox, which is already the third-largest political force in the Spanish Parliament, has coincided with the rise of the far right in Europe, at a time when the continent is grappling with fierce identity debates, the economic fallout of a pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.Hard-right forces already govern Italy, and on Friday, Finland’s main conservative party announced a new coalition government with a nationalist party. In France, Marine Le Pen’s normalization strategy is steadily bearing fruit.The leader of the far-right Vox party, Santiago Abascal, bottom right, in Parliament in Madrid in March.Chema Moya/EPA, via ShutterstockSantiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, has made it clear that he intends to make the most of his party’s gains locally. “We are and we will be extending our hand to build an alternative,” he wrote on Twitter this week, just as Vox and the Popular Party were locked in negotiations over regional governments.While municipal councils had to be formed by Saturday, regional governments have more time, and new agreements between Vox and the Popular Party could be reached in the next few days in regions such as Extremadura, in the west, and Murcia, in the east.Ms. León, the political analyst, said the local coalition agreements would help Vox, a party created only a decade ago, gain experience in running cities and provide it with resources to consolidate its organizational base. But she added that the most important outcome of the agreements is that they “have paved the way” for an alliance at the national level.Most polls show the Popular Party, also known by its initials PP, winning most votes in the early general elections that Mr. Sánchez has called for next month. But it would require an alliance with Vox to be able to form a government, a possibility that Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Popular Party leader, has not ruled out.“Such clear pacts have been concluded between Vox and the PP” at the local level, Ms. León said, that “we already know they will ally” after the national elections.The prospect of the far right gaining national power has come as a shock in a country where nationalist forces had long been sidelined because of the shadow of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, which ended only in the 1970s.Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain at the White House in May. He called for a snap election next month following gains by the opposition.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIn particular, the alliance between the Popular Party and Vox to govern the Valencia region has raised concerns about a rollback of civil rights.The coalition agreement in Valencia promises to “preserve the quality of education by removing ideology from the classroom,” in an apparent allusion to contents on gender equality that form part of the curriculum and which Vox has long criticized. The agreement also makes no mention of climate change, a phenomenon that some Vox leaders have denied is linked to human activity.Ms. León said that the agreement showed that the Popular Party “is willing to compromise on some issues on which it has different views from Vox” in order to govern.The left was quick to use the Valencia agreement as proof that a Popular Party governing in alliance with Vox would be a step backward.“There is something much more dangerous than Vox, and that is a PP that assumes the postulates and policies of Vox,” Mr. Sánchez said in an interview with El País on Sunday. “And this is what we are seeing: the negation of political, social and scientific consensus.”Under pressure, the Popular Party has tried to distance itself from the most controversial positions of the far-right party. After a top Vox leader in Valencia said on Friday that “gender violence does not exist” — an issue that parties from across the political spectrum have long acknowledged and combated — Mr. Feijóo rushed to denounce his remarks.“Gender violence exists,” Mr. Feijóo wrote on Twitter. “We will not take a step back in the fight against this scourge. We will not give up our principles, no matter the cost.” More

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      Giorgia Meloni Leads Voting in Italy, in Breakthrough for Europe’s Hard Right

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      ROME — Italy appeared to turn a page of European history on Sunday by electing a hard-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, whose long record of bashing the European Union, international bankers and migrants has sown concern about the nation’s reliability in the Western alliance. Early projections based on a narrow sampling of precincts, as well as exit polls, on Sunday night suggested that Ms. Meloni, the leader of the nationalist Brothers of Italy, a party descended from the remnants of fascism, had led a right-wing coalition to a majority in Parliament, defeating a fractured left and a resurgent anti-establishment movement. The final results would not be clear until Monday, and it will still be weeks before the new Italian parliament is seated and a new government is formed, leaving plenty of time for political machinations. But Ms. Meloni’s strong showing, with about 25 percent of the vote, the highest of any single party, makes her the prohibitive favorite to become the country’s first female prime minister. While she is a strong supporter of Ukraine, her coalition partners deeply admire Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and have criticized sanctions against Russia.“From the Italians has arrived a clear indication,” Ms. Meloni, known for her crescendoing rhetoric and cult of personality, said in a measured victory speech at nearly 3 a.m., “for the center-right to guide Italy.”After saying she had suffered through a “violent electoral campaign” filled with unfair attacks, Ms. Meloni spoke about “reciprocal respect” and recreating “trust in the institutions.” She posed flashing a victory sign. “We are at the starting point,” she said, adding, “Italy chose us, and we will never betray it.”The victory, in an election with lower turnout than usual, comes as formerly taboo and marginalized parties with Nazi or fascist heritages are entering the mainstream — and winning elections — across Europe. This month, a hard-right group founded by neo-Nazis and skinheads became the largest party in Sweden’s likely governing coalition. In France this year, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen — for a second consecutive time — reached the final round of presidential elections. In Spain, the hard-right Vox, a party closely aligned with Ms. Meloni, is surging.But it is Italy, the birthplace of fascism and a founding member of the European Union, that has sent the strongest shock wave across the continent after a period of European-centric stability led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who directed hundreds of billions of euros in recovery funds to modernize Italy and helped lead Europe’s strong response to Russia. Giorgia Meloni preparing to cast her vote at a polling station in Rome on Sunday.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times“This is a sad day for the country,” Debora Serracchiani, a leader of the Democratic Party, which will now lead the opposition, said in a statement early Monday morning.Ms. Meloni’s victory showed that the allure of nationalism — of which she is a strong advocate — remained undimmed, despite the breakthroughs by E.U. nations in coming together to pool sovereignty and resources in recent years, first to combat the coronavirus pandemic and then Mr. Putin’s initiation of the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.How, and how deeply, a right-wing coalition in Italy led by Ms. Meloni could threaten that cohesion is now the foremost concern of the European establishment.Ms. Meloni has staunchly, and consistently, supported Ukraine and its right to defend itself against Russian aggression. But her coalition partners — Matteo Salvini, the firebrand leader of the League, and the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi — have clearly aligned themselves with Mr. Putin, questioning sanctions and echoing his propaganda. That fracture, and the bitter competition between the right-wing leaders, could prove fatal for the coalition, leading to a short-lived government. But some political analysts say Ms. Meloni, having attained power, may be tempted to soften her support for sanctions, which are unpopular in much of Italy. If she does, there is concern that Italy could be the weak link that breaks the European Union’s strong united position against Russia.Ms. Meloni had spent the campaign seeking to reassure an international audience that her support of Ukraine was unwavering. She sought to allay concerns by condemning Mussolini, whom she once admired, and Italy’s Fascist past. She also made more supportive noises about Italy’s place in the European Union and distanced herself from Ms. Le Pen and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, whom she had previously emulated. But that pivoting was more for international markets than Italian voters, who didn’t much care about her past, or even her affinity for illiberal democracies. The Italian electorate had not moved to the right, political scientists said, but instead again resorted to a perennial desire for a new leader who could possibly, and providentially, solve all its ills. Ms. Meloni found herself in the right place at the right time. Hers was virtually the only major party to remain outside Mr. Draghi’s national unity government, allowing her to soak up an increasing share of the opposition. Her support surged from 4 percent to nearly about 25 percent.After a revolt by a party in Mr. Draghi’s broad unity government in July, the right-wing parties, eager to go to elections they were favored to win, sensed opportunity and bolted, with Ms. Meloni in the pole position.There is little concern in the Italian establishment that she will undermine Italian democracy — she has been a consistent advocate for elections during unelected technocratic governments and has long served in Parliament. There is also a widespread belief that Italy’s dependence on hundreds of billions of euros in relief funds from the European Union will force Ms. Meloni and her government to follow the spending plans, reforms and overall blueprint established by Mr. Draghi. The money comes in tranches and the plans have to meet strict criteria. If she reverses course, Italy could lose out on billions of essentially free euros as rising energy prices and inflation — much of it stemming from the sanctions against Russia — are expected to worsen in coming months.Giorgia Meloni, addressing supporters during a rally in Piazza Duomo in Milan earlier this month.Piero Cruciatti/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut there is concern about Ms. Meloni’s lack of experience and her party’s lack of technical expertise, especially in running the eurozone’s third-largest economy, and Mr. Draghi has kept in close touch with her, both to ensure her support for Ukraine and, insiders say, to help find someone who can provide economic continuity.Nevertheless, Ms. Meloni represents a historic break at the top of Italian government. She came of political age in a post-Fascist, hard right that sought to redefine itself by seizing on new symbols and texts, especially “The Lord of the Rings” and other works by the British writer J.R.R. Tolkien, to distance itself from the taboos of Fascism. She grew up with a single mother in a working-class area of Rome, and being a woman, and mother, has been central to her political identity. She once ran for mayor while pregnant because she said powerful men had told her she couldn’t. Her most famous speech includes the refrain “I am a woman. I am a mother.” Being a woman has also distinguished her, and marked a major shift, from her coalition partners, especially Mr. Berlusconi, the subject of endless sex scandals.But Ms. Meloni, Mr. Berlusconi and Mr. Salvini share a hard-right vision for the country. Ms. Meloni has called for a naval blockade against migrants and spread fears about a “great replacement” of native Italians. The three share populist proposals for deep tax cuts that economists fear would inflate Italy’s already enormous debt, and a traditionalist view of the family that liberals worry will at least freeze in place gay rights and which could, in practice, roll back abortion rights.Despite the constraints of an Italian Constitution that is explicitly anti-Fascist and designed to stymie the rise of another Mussolini, many liberals are now worried that the right-wing coalition will erode the country’s norms. There was concern that if the coalition were to win two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, it would have the ability to change the Constitution to increase government powers. From left to right, Matteo Salvini, Silvio Berlusconi, and Giorgia Meloni attending the final rally of the center-right coalition in Rome on Thursday.Alessandra Tarantino/Associated PressOn Thursday, during one of Ms. Meloni’s final rallies before the election, she exclaimed that “if the Italians give us the numbers to do it, we will.”But the coalition appeared not to hit that mark. The main party of the left, the Democratic Party, all but guaranteed its defeat by failing to heal its differences with other liberal and centrist parties, including a new group of moderates. The moderates, backed by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and attracting some former leaders of Mr. Berlusconi’s party, who were disillusioned with his following of the hard right, did better than expected, but still seemed to remain in the single digits.What really held the right back from a landslide were their former governing partners, the Five Star Movement, the once anti-establishment movement that triggered the collapse of Mr. Draghi’s government when it revolted in July.In 2018, the party’s burn-down-the-elite rhetoric led it to become the country’s most popular party and largest force in Parliament. Years of governing — first with the hard-right Mr. Salvini, and then with the Democratic Party, and then under Mr. Draghi — exposed its incompetence and infighting and it imploded. It seemed on the brink of extinction. But during the campaign, led by former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, the party surged in the country’s underserved south.That development was mainly because Five Star passed a broad unemployment benefit known as the “citizen’s income,” which though roundly criticized by moderates and the right as a handout to the lazy and a disincentive to work, has become a cherished benefit.As a result, Five Star appeared to be becoming the party of the south.“This is what is emerging,” said Angelo Tofalo, himself a southerner and a leader in the party, as he cheered Mr. Conte, at a rally in Rome on Friday. He said the party had laid down deep roots in the south, but acknowledged, “the citizen’s income is a factor.”That unexpected strength ate into Ms. Meloni’s support, while she devoured the backing of the League party of Mr. Salvini. Only years ago he was the country’s most popular populist. Now he appeared to sink to single digits. Mr. Berlusconi, once the hinge upon which the coalition turned, and who legitimized the marginalized post-Fascists and secessionist League in the 1990s, also registered a modest result.But together they had enough to govern and Ms. Meloni had the clearest claim on the office of prime minister during negotiations and consultations with Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, which will take place over the next month. The new government is likely to be seated in late October or early November.But the message of the end of a period of European taboos, and of new change, has already been sent.Ms. Meloni said in one of her last interviews before the election that her victory would be “a redemption” for all the people who “for decades had to keep their heads down” and who had an “alternative vision from the mainstream of the system of power.”Elisabetta Povoledo More

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      Isabel Díaz Ayuso Wins Madrid's Regional Election

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      Isabel Díaz Ayuso, a conservative politician dubbed a “Trumpista” by her opponents, won the Madrid regional election by a landslide after she refused to shut down the capital’s bars and shops.MADRID — She is a conservative who campaigned on a slogan that came down to one word: Freedom. She offered herself as a champion of small business and scoffed at national coronavirus restrictions.Her critics called her a “Trumpista.” But Isabel Díaz Ayuso is now a rising force in Spanish politics. Voters rewarded the right-wing leader of the Madrid region with a landslide victory on Tuesday after she defied the central government by keeping the capital’s bars and shops open throughout much of the pandemic.She suggested that her victory showed that pandemic fatigue and economic distress had left Spaniards unwilling to endure more of the measures favored by the left-wing national government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.“Madrid is freedom — and they don’t understand our way of living,” she told her supporters about her left-wing opponents who suffered a crushing loss in the vote.Ms. Ayuso’s Popular Party more than doubled its number of seats in Madrid’s regional assembly, trouncing other parties, including Mr. Sánchez’s Socialists. Her party fell just short of an absolute majority but will hold onto power with support from the far-right Vox party.She is the most talked-about politician in Spain right now. But with nationwide elections not planned for another two years, analysts are divided over whether she could make the leap to the national political stage, or would even want to.Even so, Ms. Ayuso’s victory, could signal that a shift to the right is underway more broadly as the country struggles to emerge from the ravages of the pandemic.Ms. Ayuso, 42, stuck to a simple and clear message that connected with voters who have endured more than a year of pandemic, said Lluís Orriols, a professor of politics at the Carlos III University in Madrid.“Maintaining Madrid open and economically active was something visible to all, while demonstrating that lockdown measures really help keep people healthy is something harder to do,” Mr. Orriols said.Madrid was the epicenter of Spain’s pandemic in the spring of 2020, when its hospitals overflowed with Covid-19 patients. But after the central government lifted a nationwide state of emergency last June, Ms. Ayuso ensured that the city was one of the most bustling in Europe, even when its Covid-19 infection rate crept back up after Easter.This week, Covid-19 patients are filling 44 percent of the beds in Madrid’s intensive care units, which is about double the national average.Ms. Ayuso’s handling of the pandemic provoked tensions even within her administration. After resigning last year as the head of Madrid’s regional health services, Dr. Yolanda Fuentes, recently attacked Ms. Ayuso’s campaign slogan on Twitter.“To understand that freedom means to do whatever you want during a pandemic, when intensive care units are above capacity and colleagues feel defeated, seems to me indecent, to say the least,” Dr. Fuentes said.A busy restaurant in Madrid in March. Despite the pandemic, eateries and shops remained open at the direction of Ms. Ayuso.Susana Vera/ReutersOutside the headquarters of the Popular Party on Tuesday evening, a crowd of supporters danced to the sound of a D.J. Several of them said they were celebrating Ms. Ayuso’s personal victory, rather than that of her party and its national leader, Pablo Casado.“She’s totally a pop icon and a mass phenomenon,” Mariola Vicario, a 25-year-old student, said of Ms. Ayuso. “I don’t consider Casado to have her strength.”In terms of handling the pandemic, Ms. Vicario said that Ms. Ayuso “took measures when needed, but what she did not do is let people starve to death” by keeping Madrid’s economy shut down as long as that of other cities.Madrid’s vote was a resounding defeat for left-wing parties, but it also showed that Ms. Ayuso can keep conservative votes that might have gone to Vox.Mr. Casado has sought to distance his party from Vox, notably last year when he refused to back a thwarted attempt by Vox to oust Prime Minister Sánchez in a parliamentary vote of no confidence.In contrast, Ms. Ayuso said during her campaign that the Popular Party differed on specific issues from Vox, but also suggested that the two had enough common ground to work together in Madrid if needed.Outside the Vox party headquarters in Madrid. The Popular Party’s lead over Vox in Madrid widened significantly compared with 2019.Manu Fernandez/Associated PressEven in the midst of the pandemic, turnout in Madrid reached a record 76 percent on Tuesday, 12 percentage points higher than in the 2019 vote. It was also significantly higher than most other elections recently in Europe, where voters have been reluctant to turn out amid the health concerns.In her closing campaign speech on May 2, which was a public holiday in Madrid that commemorates the city’s fight against the occupation of Napoleon’s troops, Ms. Ayuso made a thinly veiled comparison between the 1808 resistance against the French and her own stance against the central government during the pandemic.Ms. Ayuso, who studied journalism, was a second-tier politician when Mr. Casado unexpectedly handpicked her in early 2019 to be his party’s lead candidate ahead of an election in the Madrid region.She then took charge of the capital region, which the Popular Party has run since 1996, but was forced to govern with the support of a center-right party, Ciudadanos. Tensions between the partners mounted earlier this year, and Ms. Ayuso called a snap election.On Tuesday, Ciudadanos failed to pick up enough votes to even hold a single seat within Madrid’s regional assembly — votes that likely benefited Ms. Ayuso’s party instead.The election ended the political career of Pablo Iglesias, the founder of the far-left Unidas Podemos party. He had unexpectedly abandoned his post as deputy prime minister of Spain to run in the Madrid regional election.In a farewell address to his supporters, Mr. Iglesias said he was sorry to witness “the impressive success of the Trumpist right that Ayuso represents.” More