It is night and the floor of the central lake is torn like a curtain. An entire ship appears before your eyes, fully illuminated, and thousands of people hold their breath at once. ‘El Sueño de Toledo’ has been performing this trick since 2019 before an audience of around 4,000 per performance. I was one of them and I remember being stuck in the stands, with my mouth open like a kid, and thinking: “Okay, this is amazing.”
For such a scene, Pue du Fou Spain has been re-voted as the best theme park in Europe, ahead of Disneyland Paris. It’s great news to join a number of other awards, such as the Park World Excellence Award for Best Marketing Initiative for ‘The Call’ collected in London this week (the third it’s won). But that’s only half the story. The other half talk about abused horses and buried animals, apart from one worker who has been complaining for years.
Night of Kotor
On Saturday, October 17, in the Montenegrin city of Kotor (no, we’re not talking about the great video game from the defunct Bioware), the World Travel Awards, the so-called “Oscars of tourism”, gave Pue du Fou Spain its second consecutive European title. Behind were Disneyland Paris, Fantasialand, The Land of Legends (Turkey) and Tivoli Gardens (Denmark). According to Las Provincias, Disneyland won seven years in a row and was dethroned in 2025. It consoled itself with the Best Resort award.
Voting is also mixed: public vote and evaluation by a jury of experts. The park sought a vote for weeks and ended up with the approved expansion of three hotels and the creation of about 500 jobs. Next is the desire to win the world title. Voting will end on October 30 and the winner will be announced on December 12 in Tanzania. Competing are Disneyland Paris, Walt Disney World, Shanghai Disney, Universal Studios Singapore, Legoland, Ferrari World, Sun World or Na Hills and Warner Bros. World in Abu Dhabi. All of them are heavyweights.
Why it works
Puy du Fou does not have roller coasters. He sells shows, and he sells them very well. What I said at the beginning and any audience will surely recognize is ‘El Sueño de Toledo’, a night performance that tells 1,500 years of history on a stage of five hectares, with more than 200 actors, horsemen, water and fire. Until November 1, it is scheduled on a weekend and this Saturday, for the first time, there will be two passes on the same day.
There are more like ‘A Pen and Sword’, a smoky comedy from the Golden Age, starring Lope de Vega. In 2024, the IAAPA crowned it the world’s best event in Las Vegas. ‘El Último Cantar’ is something more fanfic with a bigger budget and follows Cid Campeador for 30 minutes of fighting and honor. Also noteworthy is the ‘Allende la Mar Oceana’, an immersive event in which the audience does not sit, but sails to the Santa Maria of Columbus, and the movement of the land and the smell of the sea, or ‘The Drum of Liberty’, a 2025 novelty that makes Toledo resist Napoleon 2121.
In fact, last year it closed in style, with 1.72 million viewers in 2025, the best figure in its history. This year’s season ends on November 1 and reopens for its Christmas season on November 28 There is little room for pause.
Controversial history
Its name, Pui Du Fu, already sells history. Translated from French, it literally means “hill of the beach” and refers to the French theme park located in the middle of the forest, next to the Renaissance castle of Puy du Fou, burned during the Vendee War. So from Toledo and Castizo, rather a little.
In fact, the park was born in France in 1977 by the scheming politician Philippe de Villiers, whose son Nicolas presides over the association today. In 2022, four historians published ‘Le Puy du Faux’, a title that plays with “falsehood” as they accused the park of being idealistic and forgetting chapters such as slavery, colonialism or the infamous Vichy regime.
The controversy widened when the company landed in Toledo, very cheaply. A report collected descriptive issues following its occurrence. Author Jose Angel Manas said that there “spectacles cancel out meaning.” Because, although the park is “not an academic institution and is not intended to replace those who search for or preserve heritage,” as Olivier Strebel defends, it is easy to interpret it as a truth that hardly equates to Marvel with files of false history.
And then there’s the video, ‘The Truth Behind Pui du Fou’, which brings to the table its founders’ links to the Jewish family and how their fictions have been disseminated in a propaganda apparatus, in addition to subsequent controversies of a certain sector of accelerative archeology (such as Peter Thiel). Behind it is Michael Herran, a doctor of archeology and popular history with thousands of subscribers and several published books.
behind the scenes
In 2019, Ecologistas en Acción reported to the Vice-Ministry of the Environment and Tajo Hydrographic Confederation (CHT) that water was being removed from a well with a tank during the work. They estimated it could be around a million liters and requested a precautionary suspension. Puy du Fou attributed it to a contractor who had done his own work without concessions and demanded it be stopped. I haven’t found any resolution or subsequent approval, so I can’t tell you how it ended For context, water was already the weak point from the start: cost figures requested by the company in 2017, environmentalists’ initial rejection, and critics’ announcement to go to court after the 2018 DIA.
In November 2024, the media elDiario.es published a report about workers without time records and with long unpaid breaks. They titled it with a worker’s phrase: “We sleep on the floor.” At that time, the CCOO and UGT reported the park to labor inspection for failure to comply with time controls and lack of cleanliness. The UGT spoke of abuse of continuous fixed terms and unilaterally imposed terms. According to Enrique Clavaro, a member of the CCOO union, the show is very good because of the people’s efforts, but the working conditions are “no.”
The CEO changes in July 2025. Several employees told elDiario.es that sprains, bruises and anxiety attacks were frequent and that the show was under orders to continue no matter what happened over time. The park says the same from the other side: its shows are designed to be performed in any weather conditions and none are canceled due to rain. They had about twenty nurses then, but no doctor or ambulance.
In February 2026, the park also filed a criminal complaint against its former CEO. On the other hand, the EIS of the extension declared it effective. Three hotels will be built (the first in 2028), with about 426 rooms and eight phases until 2035. There is also a self-defense plan against fires in 2022 and kitchen fires in 2025. The same media detailed the initial environmental green light and reports of the Iberian lynx. But a few months ago, the government council approved the extension of PSI (Project of Singular Interest) with an investment of more than 23 crores, but the water problem has not stopped yet.
Before the third hotel opens (scheduled for 2032), an update report from Chittagong Hill Tracts, City Council and Water Infrastructure will be required. They have sought some time for expansion of the treatment plant, a restoration plan for the Guajraj stream and a follow-up due to the delay in the 2018 compensatory measures. Of course, the drama today is the regularization of urban supply headlines; This is not a park violation.
Crack a few eggs
They say you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs but what was broken here, according to the evidence, were feathers and wool. On May 4, three former workers told elDiario.es that animals had been buried at the facility for at least four years. They took the bodies and buried them, one says, where “it seemed.” They talked about geese, sheep, lambs, goats, chickens, rabbits and a sow. All on a hill about 500 meters from the public entrance.
Park opened an internal investigation. Two weeks later he admitted to the burials, which he attributed to “discrete irregularities” between 2021 and July 2025, and fired the three heads of the animal team. elDiario.es also reported that the head of the park was informed by a former employee and that management knew about the matter since September 2025.
On June 27, RTVE Noticias reconstructed the case with five former employees and an inside source, all anonymous for fear of reprisals. The six sources contain about 30 buried animals. Two believe they could have reached 100. RTVE had access to the team’s WhatsApp chats and in one, about a pig named Carlotta, an employee wrote “Pig, don’t say she’s buried.” A police patrol visited the park in October and found no sign. Mobile phones were banned then.
But although the sources decry the beating and kicking of cows, goats, donkeys and sheep, and inadequate diet and poor food, they are allegations, not proven facts. Board vets identified minor and correctable documentary deficiencies in casualty identification. They have opened a disciplinary file which, according to the ministry, does not entail a fine and they consider sufficient benefit to animal welfare. Ecologists in Action responded to the Toledo court with charges of animal abuse and crimes against the environment. Since then I have not found any judicial solution.
The park has already committed to an animal welfare committee, identification from birth and mandatory training.
What remains to be seen
Puy du Fou Spain is full of talent, artisans and a production that leaves you speechless. The rewards are real and so are people’s actions. Its job board is always open (currently with twelve offers) and its professionals include experts and dancers of the highest national level.
However, a garden that presents itself as a reference to Europe must be able to see under the mountain. And its workers are entitled to water in August and a roof in January. On December 12, in Tanzania, we will know if the world sees it the same way. Until then, there’s a court in Toledo to scrutinize the pretrial (and current history) who cares for those who support the ship every night.
Picture | Own photo / Emiliano Garcia-Page Sanchez / Puy du Fou website for Wikimedia Commons
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