Europe at a glance

Paris

Lost painting fetches millions:

A long-lost proto-Renaissance masterpiece, found hanging in the kitchen of a house in northern France, has gone under the hammer in Paris for s24m, making it the most expensive medieval painting ever sold at auction – and its nonagenarian owner a multimillionaire. Christ Mocked, by the 13th century Florentine painter Cimabue, was spotted by an auctioneer who had been brought in to assess the contents of the woman’s house in Compiègne, in Picardy. She had assumed it was a religious icon with no significant value, and had hung it above her oven’s hot plate.

Barcelona

Rival marches: Supporters and opponents of Catalan independence held major rallies in Barcelona last weekend, as tensions caused by the jailing of nine separatist leaders on 14 October continued to simmer. On Saturday, around 350,000 separatists marched through the city; that event was peaceful, but later that night a separate demonstration in favour of direct action, and attended by around 10,000 people, ended in violent clashes with the police. The next day, at least 80,000 people took part in a pro-union rally – some of them carrying placards reading “We are Catalans too”, as they marched down Passeig de Gràcia, the scene of some of the worst of last week’s rioting. Despite the disparity in the numbers of marchers, opinion polls indicate that Catalans continue to be narrowly in favour of retaining the region’s current status, with 44% describing themselves as pro-independence, and 48.3% against.

Madrid

Franco’s remains moved: The remains of Spain’s former fascist dictator, General Francisco Franco, have been exhumed from his tomb at the Valley of the Fallen, outside Madrid, and reinterred in a family plot in a municipal cemetery in the city. The exhumation, last Thursday, was conducted at the behest of the Socialist government, which had made it an election pledge, and marks the end of a lengthy dispute over the dictator’s resting place. Franco’s critics argued that his original burial site – in a grandiose basilica at the monument he himself commissioned as a “national act of atonement” after Spain’s brutal civil war – glorified his decades-long regime. But his family had gone to court in an ultimately failed attempt to block it. As his coffin was borne out of the mausoleum, family members shouted “Viva España! Viva Franco!” while supporters who had gathered outside the complex gave fascist salutes.

Koblenz, Germany

Syrian torture charges: German prosecutors have charged two Syrian immigrants with crimes against humanity, for their alleged role in the torture of thousands of opponents of the Assad regime. The pair are suspected of having been officers in Syria’s feared civilian intelligence service, the GID. The first, Anwar R., is suspected of overseeing the torture of 4,000 people between 2011 and 2012 at a detention centre near Damascus, 59 of whom died as a result. The second, Eyad A., is suspected of having worked at the facility. The men entered Germany as asylum seekers in 2014 and 2018 respectively, and were arrested in February this year. They have been charged under the principle of “universal jurisdiction”, allowing courts to try crimes against humanity regardless of where they took place. Their trial, the first of its kind relating to the Syrian conflict, is due to start in Koblenz in early 2020.

Perugia, Italy

Triumph for Salvini: Italy’s hard-right anti-immigrant League party, led by the former deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, has won a crushing victory in regional elections in Umbria, bringing half a century of entrenched left-wing rule in the region to an end. The vote was the first electoral test of public opinion since the unlikely coalition between the League and the “anti-establishment” Five Star Movement collapsed in the summer – and was replaced by a similarly unlikely coalition between Five Star and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD). In Umbria, the League’s candidate for governor, Donatella Tesei – who was also backed by the far-right Brothers of Italy, and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia – took 57% of the vote, while the candidate fielded by the PD and Five Star took just 37%. Salvini described the decisive victory as an eviction order to the coalition.

Zolote, Ukraine

Hopes of peace: Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed separatists began withdrawing from a key front-line zone in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday – the first major step towards peace under a deal agreed between Ukraine, Russia and the separatists at the start of October. The two sides had been due to begin their withdrawal from the town of Zolote on 9 October. However, Ukrainian war veterans – convinced that Ukraine is being lured into giving up its sovereign territory by Moscow – had sought to prevent the pull-out, leading to skirmishes with police that delayed the process. Last Saturday, however, Ukraine’s President Zelensky travelled to the scene, and ordered the veterans to disarm.

Erfurt, Germany

A boost for the far-right: Mainstream parties were routed in an election in the east German state of Thuringia this week, in which more than half of voters cleaved to either the radical left or the far-right. Die Linke, a successor to East Germany’s ruling communist party, topped the ballot with 31% of the vote, while the far-right AfD doubled its share to come second, on 23.4%. The result is a boost to the AfD’s local leader, Björn Höcke, a former teacher known for his virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric, who leads an extreme faction within the AfD, known as the Wing.