Teenage couples skated hand in hand, while the watching crowds sipped mulled wine and hot chocolate to a soundtrack of Nat King Cole. This was the setup I witnessed at this year’s Atreju, Italy’s biggest rightwing festival, which has been running since 1998 as an annual celebration of patriotism and nationalism. Fantasy fans may clock this from its name: bizarrely, Atreju (Atreyu in English) is the main character in The Neverending Story. On the one hand is a good Italy: made up of patriots who express nationalist pride in food, landscape and politics. As one Atreju panellist put it: Italy was once chaos, and now it is stable and credible.

Source: The Guardian December 29, 2025 20:00 UTC