Moving by the darkened holds of a duplicate 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 exhibits at Puy du Fou España, a historic theme park that’s all the craze in Spain right now, with over 1,000,000 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 full of hallowed symbols just like the cross and the flag, and a lot of the exhibits characteristic conquests and superb battles to defend the nation. The extra questionable features 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 historical taboos continued to run by Spanish society.

But the strategy has raised considerations in regards to the historical past that the park is highlighting as a substitute — pageantry that emphasizes Spain’s Catholic identification and its unity in opposition to international 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 long criticized the French park as selling nationalist views. It equally glosses over among the most painful episodes in France’s previous, comparable 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 in opposition to the previous prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a Socialist who handed a memory law to honor victims of the Civil War and Franco’s repressive rule.

Spain, Mr. de la Villéon stated, proved an excellent 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 formidable complicated 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 might be the large draw.

“The Last Song” takes place in a rotating auditorium and follows El Cid, a knight and warlord who grew to become 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 received the IAAPA Brass Ring award for “Best Theater Production,” thought of one of many worldwide leisure trade’s most prestigious prizes. On a latest afternoon, guests had been ecstatic in regards to 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 preventing Romans. In the park, youngsters may very well be seen enjoying 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 mission.

“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 exhibits depict Isabella I as a visionary and a merciful queen, making no point out of her order to expel Jews during 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 country. 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 memories of Francoist Spain were still raw.

“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 is still.

Mr. de la Villéon stated that he had appeared 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, stated the park introduced the Catholic reconquest of Muslim-ruled Spain as the inspiration 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 associates at a big wood desk in a medieval-style tavern adorned with imperial flags. “This park is a way to reclaim our history.”

Her good friend, Esteban Garces, a supporter of the far-right Vox get together, 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.