Spanish voters punished Prime Minister José MarÃÂa Aznar’s People’s Party for the bloodshed of last week’s Madrid terrorist attacks on Sunday, throwing it out of government in an angry reaction to his handling of the aftermath.
In one of the most dramatic elections of the post-Franco era, voters turned on the ruling party, convinced that the multiple bomb attack on Madrid’s packed commuter trains had been carried out by al-Qaeda and with a growing sense that the People’s party had tried to hide the truth.
With intelligence agencies around the globe trying to identify a man who, in a videotape found in Madrid, claimed responsibility for the attacks for al-Qaeda and with three Moroccan suspects in police custody, most voters believed the Spanish capital had suffered its equivalent of the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Socialist leader José Luis RodrÃÂguez Zapatero swept to a surprise victory that was a blow to the Bush administration. He has pledged to withdraw Spain’s 1 300 troops from Iraq if the United Nations does not take control by June 30 when Washington plans to hand power back to Iraqis.
Zapatero started his victory speech with a minute’s silence for the victims of Thursday’s attacks before vowing to fight all kinds of terrorism. ”Together we will defeat it,” he told supporters outside his party headquarters in Madrid.
Angry protests on the streets of large cities overnight had set a tone of brooding resentment and bitterness for a vote in which the deaths of 200 people and the injuries of more than 1 500 had inflamed some already sharp divisions in Spain.
Protesters accused the government of trying to hide the fact that violent Islamism was to blame and demanded explanations for Aznar’s backing of the Iraq war against the will of some 90% of Spaniards.
Those worries helped drive a huge turnout that had reached 62,9% of voters by mid-afternoon, 7% higher than at the same stage of the last election in 2000. They produced a reverse in the fortunes of a People’s party which led in opinion polls by three to five points a week ago. With almost all ballots counted, Zapatero’s Socialists had won 42,6% of the vote, gaining 164 seats in the 350-seat parliament. The Popular Party took 37,7%, 148 seats. No other party won more than 5% or 10 seats.
It was also the first example of a single terrorist attack having a direct affect on the outcome of an election in a leading western country.
Zapatero, a 43-year-old lawyer, had pledged during campaigning to swap Aznar’s pact with Bush for a return to a European alliance with France and Germany.
Although Aznar had stuck to a pledge to stand down and not present himself for a third consecutive term, commentators said the vote was a direct criticism of him rather than of his hand-picked successor, Mariano Rajoy.
”The great defeat here is not of Mr Rajoy but of Mr Aznar,” said political commentator José Oneto, who claimed Aznar had done little to boost Rajoy’s standing during campaigning.
All predictions about who might win were blown away by the unknown terrorists who placed 10 bombs on four trains during Thursday’s early-morning rush hour in Madrid.
”Spain has never voted in such a tragic situation. There’s a feeling of anguish, sadness, horror,” said Joaquin Leguina, a former president of Madrid’s regional government.
The untried Zapatero will now have to find backing from small regionalist parties in Catalonia or elsewhere.
A handful of young protesters had screamed ”murderer” at Rajoy as he cast his vote at a school outside Madrid. ”We did not want to go to war,” they shouted.
On Saturday night, crowds besieged the People’s party headquarters, angry at the perceived lack of information they were receiving about the circumstances surrounding Thursday’s blasts, especially from the state broadcaster RTVE.
Rajoy, who admitted defeat last night with 95% of the vote counted, had declined to comment on the arrests or videotape. ”These elections come at a time of great pain,” he said.
The People’s party had based much of its campaign on a”no negotiating” stance in the face of the armed Basque separatist group Eta and had criticised opponents it considered weak in their opposition to the group.
Separatist parties or regionalists demanding more powers also suffered from a campaign against them that backfired so badly it helped one party, the separatist Catalan Republican Left, increase its number of seats from one to eight, making it the fourth largest party.
Aznar’s final mistake was to spend the first two days after the Madrid bombings insisting that Eta was probably to blame, despite the fact that it would have been a dramatic change in the terrorist group’s tactics.
A Basque-language daily on Sunday published a statement by Eta which, for a second time, denied involvement in the attacks. – Guardian Unlimited Â