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

Moving via the darkened holds of a reproduction of Christopher Columbus’s ship, guests on a latest afternoon marveled on the tangle of compasses, cordage and barrels. They stumbled because the ship swang and creaked with the swell of the ocean. At final, 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 folks, he added, “I apologize in advance if iniquities or injustices are committed.”

And so ends one of many reveals at Puy du Fou España, a historic theme park that’s all the fashion in Spain at the moment, with over one million guests anticipated this 12 months.

The reputation of the park has come as a shock in a rustic that has lengthy been shy about celebrating its historical past. Nationalist sentiments had been largely taboo after the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, who died within the Nineteen Seventies.

The park is crammed with hallowed symbols just like the cross and the flag, and a lot of the reveals function conquests and wonderful battles to defend the nation. The extra questionable facets of Spain’s previous — from the bloody conquest of America that adopted Columbus’s journey to Franco’s repressive rule — don’t seem in additional than 10 productions.

“What we’re trying to do is present a history that’s not divisive,” stated Erwan de la Villéon, the pinnacle of the park, noting that historic taboos continued to run via Spanish society.

But the strategy has raised issues concerning the historical past that the park is highlighting as a substitute — pageantry that emphasizes Spain’s Catholic id and its unity in opposition to overseas invaders — and the way it might form guests’ views.

“This is a selective history,” stated 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 unique Puy du Fou in France, the nation’s second most-visited theme park after Disneyland Paris, determined to take their idea overseas.

Historians have lengthy criticized the French park as selling nationalist views. It equally glosses over a few of the most painful episodes in France’s previous, reminiscent of its historical past of colonialism, and highlights the nation’s Catholic id.

The founding father of the French park, Philippe de Villiers, whom Mr. de la Villéon known as “a mentor” and “a genius,” is a outstanding far-right politician.

Mr. de la Villéon denied that the Spanish park promoted any political line. But he known as supporters of Catalan independence his “enemies” and railed in opposition to the previous prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a Socialist who handed a reminiscence legislation to honor victims of the Civil War and Franco’s repressive rule.

Spain, Mr. de la Villéon stated, proved a great place for a brand new park due to the nation’s “great historical trajectory” of invasions and conquests. He selected to construct it in Toledo, he stated, as a result of the traditional metropolis south of Madrid as soon as stood on the crossroads of Europe’s kingdoms.

There, some 200 million euros, about $220 million, have been invested to create a powerful complicated of castles, farms and medieval villages crammed with terra-cotta vases and whitewashed homes with uncovered beams.

But it’s the historic stage productions, carried out in giant amphitheaters, which are the large draw.

“The Last Song” takes place in a rotating auditorium and follows El Cid, a knight and warlord who turned Spain’s biggest medieval hero, as he fights enemies showing successively behind giant panels that open onto the semicircular stage. In “Toledo’s Dream,” the flagship night present retracing 15 centuries of Spanish historical past, Columbus’s life-size ship emerges from a lake on which characters had been dancing moments earlier than.

Both reveals acquired the IAAPA Brass Ring award for “Best Theater Production,” thought-about one of many worldwide leisure business’s most prestigious prizes. On a latest afternoon, guests had been ecstatic concerning the expertise.

“Great — it’s just great. I didn’t know that history could be so appealing,” stated Vicente Vidal, 65, as he exited a present that includes Visigoths combating Romans. In the park, youngsters could possibly be seen taking part in sword-fighting, shouting, “We’ll fight for our country!”

Mr. de la Villéon, who’s French, stated the success of the park mirrored a want amongst Spanish folks to reclaim their previous. “People want to have roots, that’s the first need that the park’s success reveals,” he stated. “You come here and you think, ‘Man, it’s cool to be Spanish.’”

Modern Spain has an uneasy relationship with its historical past due to chapters such because the Inquisition and the colonization of the Americas, stated Jesús Carrobles, head of Toledo’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Historical Sciences, who was consulted on the park undertaking.

“The park allows you to reclaim an idea of your past that you can be proud of,” Mr. Carrobles stated. “A beautiful past, a past that’s worth remembering.”

But it has additionally proved to be a selective previous.

The reveals depict Isabella I as a visionary and a merciful queen, making no point out of her order to expel Jews through the Inquisition. The Aztecs seem as soon as in a dance scene, however their lethal destiny by the hands of the conquistadors is omitted.

Perhaps most telling is the park’s remedy of the Spanish Civil War, whose legacy continues to divide the nation. The battle is barely vaguely talked about on the finish of “Toledo’s Dream,” when a girl mourns her brothers who “killed each other.” The scene lasts one minute, out of a 75-minute efficiency, and the present ends with out mentioning the next four-decade dictatorship of Franco.

“Too soon to talk about it,” stated Mr. de la Villéon, noting that recollections of Francoist Spain had been nonetheless uncooked.

“It’s a very consensual show, which has glossed over the questionable aspects of Spanish history,” stated Jean Canavaggio, a French specialist in Cervantes who reviewed the script of “Toledo’s Dream.” He added that the park couldn’t have succeeded had it taken a “critical look” at Spanish historical past, given how politically fraught that continues to be.

Mr. de la Villéon stated that he had regarded for occasions illustrating Spain’s unity. In Puy du Fou España, they revolve round a central aspect: Catholicism.

Nearly each present options clerics and troopers 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 religion and had a small chapel arrange within the park — argued that Catholicism was “the matrix” of Spanish historical past.

Mr. Gómez Bravo, the historian, who specializes within the Civil War and Franco, stated the park offered the Catholic reconquest of Muslim-ruled Spain as the muse of Spanish unity. “This a very politically charged idea because it was promoted above all by Franco’s regime,” he stated.

Still, many within the Spanish park appeared to embrace the park’s mission.

“Spain is a great country!” stated Conchita Tejero, a girl in her 60s, who was seated with three buddies at a big picket desk in a medieval-style tavern adorned with imperial flags. “This park is a way to reclaim our history.”

Her pal, Esteban Garces, a supporter of the far-right Vox celebration, stated he noticed the park as a counterpoint to the “other history” that portrayed Spain as needing to make amends for its previous.

Exiting the park after dusk, Mr. Garces stated he had been delighted with “Toledo’s Dream.”

“The true history,” he stated.