Right-wing leaders from across Europe have called for a new “Reconquista” to defend the continent’s traditional values and its apparent Christian cultural identity while criticizing the EU’s migration policies.
The gathering took place at the summit of the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group in Madrid with a huge demonstration of strength, a powerful parade of troops from a new European right.
The first summit since the foundation of the PfE faction, served as a platform for right-wing European leaders to rally against supranational Europe and advocate for a stronger, conservative Europe based on nationalism and strict immigration controls.
Prominent right-wing leaders, besides host Santiago Abascal of VOX, included France’s Marine Le Pen, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
The Patriots for Europe group is the third-largest political bloc in the EU parliament, gathered in Madrid for its first high-profile rally since the summer elections. The event was held under the slogan “Make Europe Great Again,” an explicit nod to US President Donald Trump’s campaign motto. The conference centered on the theme of battling Islam, EU bureaucracy, globalism and left-wing “woke policies” and diversity.
The term “Reconquista” echoed throughout the event. The Reconquista or the reconquest of al-Andalus were a series of military and cultural campaigns that European Christian kingdoms waged against the Muslim kingdoms following the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Umayyad Caliphate, culminating in the reign of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain.
Leaders call for Reconquista
In the meeting Spain’s Abascal also compared the current political situation of Europe to the centuries-long campaign by Christian kingdoms to free the territory of modern Spain from Muslim rule in the Middle Ages.
“We Spaniards are proud to be known for that extraordinary feat of our ancestors. We are ready to be that again,” Abascal noted. “We are ready to be that wall of Europe once again in the face of Islamist advance,” he said, vowing to fight against “global dictatorship,” including the one imposed from Brussels.
The idea of Reconquista was also mentioned by Martin Helme, the leader of Estonia’s Conservative People’s Party. “For Europe to be great again, we need to have a new Reconquista,” he said while accusing globalist elites of trying to “damage our Christian civilization and replace it with their sick satanic utopia.”
Orban, a consistent opponent of the EU’s lenient approach to migration, also weighed in, suggesting that “the replacement of the population of Europe is not a conspiracy theory, it is pure practice.”
The Hungarian leader Vikotr Orban also said that liberal ideology had suffered a major defeat due to Trump’s victory in the US. “The Trump tornado, has changed the world in just a couple of weeks. An era has ended,” he said.
He framed the gathering as the beginning of a new “reconquest of Europe,” stressing the need to protect traditional Christian values, secure borders and combat illegal migration and “climate fanaticism.”
Viktor Orban has clearly been emboldened by the Republican’s election victory, which has significantly improved his international prestige, as he was the only EU leader to openly endorse Donald Trump, just as he did four years earlier.
The sentiments were echoed by France’s Le Pen, who also called for “renaissance of Europe” which she said could be achieved by establishing dialogue among different right-wing forces.
Right-wing parties across the EU have grown in popularity over the past decade, with their electoral gains fueled by public discontent over rising immigration, especially from Islamic African and Middle East nations.