Two women wearing only bikini bottoms shower together in bright sunshine amid the shrubs and grottoes of a fantasy villa.

It could be the scene from an airport novel, but in fact this is the latest image to emerge of activities at Silvio Berlusconi’s Sardinian retreat.

A Spanish newspaper published the photograph yesterday, in defiance of legal threats, as Italian voters cast their ballots in the European and local elections.

The Italian Prime Minister has decried the pictures’ publication as a final attempt by political opponents to derail his campaign.

At the ballot box, opinion was divided between those who fear that the tawdry images demean their Government and those who see them as an invasion of privacy.

Last week readers of El País were treated to a picture apparently showing a former Czech Prime Minister standing naked close to an unidentified reclining woman, while other topless female guests lay on sun loungers. In another photograph published yesterday, two glamorous women emerge from the Berlusconi villa — one wearing a revealing beige mini-dress, a black coat and knee-length boots, the other a long red coat, jeans and high boots.

“These photos simply confirm the negative view I have of the Prime Minister,” Vezio De Lucia, an urban planner voting at a school near the Vatican, said. “It’s getting worse and worse.” The Right’s repeated claim that Mr Berlusconi was the victim of a plot by the international press in league with the Italian Left was “simply ridiculous”, he said.

Silvana Filasto, a lawyer, said that Mr Berlusconi “has committed no crime, as far as we know. His only defect is that he is simpatico, with an eye for pretty women.”

“No one’s private life could stand up to the kind of scrutiny he gets,” her husband, Felice Carpansano, an architect, said.

The revelations about parties held at the Villa Certosa and an investigation into the use of government jets to fly guests there may have contributed to the low turnout at the elections.

By midday yesterday, the second day of voting, turnout was 30.7 per cent, compared with 34.2 per cent at the same point in the last European elections five years ago.

El País insists that it is acting in the public interest. A lengthy report by Miguel Mora, its Rome correspondent, described the “uninhibited routine” at the estate, with its “infinite gardens, artificial lakes, sexual organs exposed, lesbian games and special effects”.

The photographs were taken by Antonello Zappadu, a local photographer who took hundreds of images with a long lens. Last week police seized Mr Zappadu’s archive after Mr Berlusconi complained that they violated his privacy. The photographer, who has worked in Colombia, said yesterday that Mr Berlusconi “scared him more than the Farc” — a reference to the Colombian Marxist guerrillas.

Yesterday MPs from Mr Berlusconi’s ruling People of Liberty (PdL) party expressed alarm at the lack of security at the villa. “What if, instead of a photographer, there had been a terrorist armed with telescopic sights?,” asked Fabrizio Cicchitto, the head of the PdL faction in the Lower House.

At the weekend the White House, which has kept Mr Berlusconi at arm’s length since he described President Obama as “suntanned”, confirmed that the US and Italian leaders would meet in Washington on June 15.

An official inquiry has begun into whether Mr Berlusconi abused his position by using state aircraft to transport musicians, dancing girls, chefs and friends to Sardinia.

He has also failed to quell controversy over his relationship with Noemi Letizia, an 18-year-old underwear model who attended a party at the villa when she was 17.

Diary of a scandal: how photographers put Berlusconi in the frame

April 26 Silvio Berlusconi attends Noemi Letizia’s 18th birthday party in Naples

April 28 His wife Veronica Lario says that he “frequents minors” and is “not well”

May 3 Ms Lario asks for a divorce

May 5 Letizia’s father Elio says he and Berlusconi are old friends

May 6 Berlusconi goes on TV to demand an apology from his wife

May 10 Letizia denies to The Times that Berlusconi is her father

May 20 Milan judges say Berlusconi bribed David Mills to lie for him in court on corruption charge

May 24 Gino Flaminio, Letizia’s ex-boyfriend, says Berlusconi first contacted her last autumn after she sent photos to Mediaset, his TV company

May 31 Flaminio retracts and apologises after he is photographed by Il Giornale, Berlusconi’s paper, accepting money for an interview

June 2 Berlusconi says that Rupert Murdoch is behind media campaign

June 4 Berlusconi investigated for abuse of office over using government aircraft to transport guests to his Sardinian villa

June 5 El País publishes photos of semi-naked women and a former Czech prime minister at the villa

June 7 El País prints more photos

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