Five years ago, Spain's foreign minister explained why his country had so far resisted the siren song of right-wing populism. "We have been vaccinated by the [Spanish] civil war and by the long years of [Francisco] Franco's dictatorship," Josep Borrell told me in an interview in Washington, arguing that Spain's turbulent experience of anti-democratic, fascist rule inoculated it from the "virus" of ascendant nativism and illiberalism seen in some of its European neighbors.
Half a decade later, Borrell, now the European Union's top diplomat, may be wondering whether the continent - and, in particular, his nation - is in need of a booster dose.