Graham Keeley

After years of socialism, is Spain about to turn to the far-right?

Good-looking and always smartly dressed, Vito Quiles sports a wristband with the red and gold of the Spanish flag. It is ubiquitous among Vox supporters. He has made a name for himself in Spain by supposedly reporting on the hate figures for the far-right: migrants, housing rights protestors, students and far-left leaders. He confronts these figures to create provocative content online. Quiles, who has 1.5 million followers on Instagram, is part of a small but growing number of right-wing agitators who are attracting young people to Vox, a far-right party which less than a decade ago was regarded as a political joke.

Why the crashes won’t stop me from using Spanish trains

From our UK edition

I am sitting in the nose of a high-speed AVE train from Madrid to Barcelona and the speedometer shoots up at an alarming rate. First 50 kmh… 100... then 150. It feels like we are on a rollercoaster. Soon we are travelling along the tracks at 300kmh (186 mph), while the countryside whizzes past in a blur. The driver looks over at me and smiles. 'Pretty good, eh?’ He's right. This was the moment I fell in love with Spain’s bullet trains. From the 1990s onwards, these slick locomotives started to expand across Spain like a spider’s web. Now the country has the largest network in Europe – and the second largest in the world – stretching 3,900 km (2,460m) across this huge nation.