**Robert Gould**

Institute of European, Eurasian and Russian Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada; Robert.Gould@carleton.ca

Received: 19 August 2019; Accepted: 25 November 2019; Published: 29 November 2019

**Abstract:** This paper contains a comparative analysis of the presentation of the national identity of Spain and Germany by the far-right populist parties Vox España and Alternative für Deutschland. It shows how each party views national identity as being in a serious crisis arising from the betrayal by old-line parties which has led to the increased influence of the EU, the consequent reduction of national sovereignty, a deleterious impact on their own and on European culture, and a harmful influence on the family. The parties repudiate many of the provisions of the EU treaties. They are equally opposed to the presence of Islam in Christian Europe, viewing it as a menace to values shared by all European nations. These analyses lead to an examination of the performance of crisis by means of deliberate provocation and the use of electronic media. It shows how these parties from very di fferent parts of Europe share remarkably close positions and use the technological achievements of the twenty-first century to attack the late-twentieth-century political and social achievements of the European Union in order to replace them with the nineteenth-century idea of the distinct ethno-cultural nation fully sovereign in its own nation-state.

**Keywords:** Alternative für Deutschland; Vox España; national identity; nationalism; nativism; crisis; Islamophobia; European Union
