A barbed-wire fence at the Hungarian border. Image: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA ImagesZala County in western Hungary is not usually the first stop on the map for tourists. Bordering Croatia and Slovenia, the county was once an agricultural powerhouse, with extensive fields that still cover the region’s plains. It also became an industrial centre during the area’s oil boom, which started in the 1930s and peaked in the 1980s before declining significantly. These days, visitors to the region are usually on their way to somewhere else, passing through what was once a significant crossroads between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. The region has struggled to adjust in the post-communist era; many of the oil wells have dried up or are no longer economic to exploit, and abandoned storage facilities and production sites dot the countryside – monuments to an industrial past.
Last week, the EU parliament voted to trigger disciplinary proceedings against Hungary over the erosion of democratic checks and balances by prime minister Viktor Orban’s ruling right-wing Fidesz party. But beyond the political headlines, a trip through Hungary’s rural west illuminates the roots of Orban’s support, and the socio-economic conditions that he has both exploited to promote his party’s agenda and neglected in pursuit of his xenophobic, anti-immigrant campaign. It also explains why many Hungarians do not seem concerned with Orban’s increasingly authoritarian trajectory.
I visited Zala County on a cycling tour hosted by the regional tourist board, who along with the local government are keen to promote the region’s potential as a destination. In the 1960s, workers drilling for oil in Zalakaros struck a thermal spring deep in the ground, sending 96º Celsius water to the surface, which transformed this Hungarian backwater to a spa town almost overnight. Riding along the quiet roads outside Zalakaros, the contrast with the wealth of the spa resort is striking. Low, simple buildings line the road, and elderly people tend small patches of land by hand. A horse and cart trundles down the rough tarmac towards us, a reminder of the profound inequality present in much of rural central and eastern Europe.
