Moving by way of 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 individuals, he added, “I apologize in advance if iniquities or injustices are committed.”
And so ends one of many exhibits at Puy du Fou España, a historic theme park that’s all the fad in Spain right now, with over one million guests anticipated this 12 months.
The recognition 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 full of hallowed symbols just like the cross and the flag, and a lot of the exhibits characteristic conquests and wonderful battles to defend the nation. The extra questionable elements 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,” mentioned Erwan de la Villéon, the top of the park, noting that historic taboos continued to run by way of Spanish society.
But the strategy has raised issues concerning the historical past that the park is highlighting as an alternative — pageantry that emphasizes Spain’s Catholic identification and its unity towards overseas invaders — and the way it could form guests’ views.
“This is a selective history,” mentioned 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, equivalent to its historical past of colonialism, and highlights the nation’s Catholic identification.
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 towards 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 mentioned, proved a perfect 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 mentioned, 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 advanced of castles, farms and medieval villages full of terra-cotta vases and whitewashed homes with uncovered beams.
But it’s the historic stage productions, carried out in massive amphitheaters, which can be the massive 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 massive 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 exhibits obtained the IAAPA Brass Ring award for “Best Theater Production,” thought-about one of many worldwide leisure trade’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,” mentioned Vicente Vidal, 65, as he exited a present that includes Visigoths preventing Romans. In the park, youngsters might be seen taking part in sword-fighting, shouting, “We’ll fight for our country!”
Mr. de la Villéon, who’s French, mentioned the success of the park mirrored a want amongst Spanish individuals to reclaim their previous. “People want to have roots, that’s the first need that the park’s success reveals,” he mentioned. “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, mentioned Jesús Carrobles, head of Toledo’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Historical Sciences, who was consulted on the park challenge.
“The park allows you to reclaim an idea of your past that you can be proud of,” Mr. Carrobles mentioned. “A beautiful past, a past that’s worth remembering.”
But it has additionally proved to be a selective previous.
The exhibits depict Isabella I as a visionary and a merciful queen, making no point out of her order to expel Jews throughout 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 therapy of the Spanish Civil War, whose legacy continues to divide the nation. The battle is just vaguely talked about on the finish of “Toledo’s Dream,” when a lady 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 following four-decade dictatorship of Franco.
“Too soon to talk about it,” mentioned Mr. de la Villéon, noting that reminiscences of Francoist Spain had been nonetheless uncooked.
“It’s a very consensual show, which has glossed over the questionable aspects of Spanish history,” mentioned 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 mentioned that he had regarded for occasions illustrating Spain’s unity. In Puy du Fou España, they revolve round a central component: 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, mentioned the park introduced 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 mentioned.
Still, many within the Spanish park appeared to embrace the park’s mission.
“Spain is a great country!” mentioned Conchita Tejero, a lady in her 60s, who was seated with three mates at a big wood desk in a medieval-style tavern adorned with imperial flags. “This park is a way to reclaim our history.”
Her buddy, Esteban Garces, a supporter of the far-right Vox social gathering, mentioned 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 mentioned he had been delighted with “Toledo’s Dream.”
“The true history,” he mentioned.
Source: www.nytimes.com