Feature
March 2008

 

2008 General Election
The prize fight for the Cortes : Zapatero v Rajo
 

For the ninth time since the Constitution was adopted in 1978, voters in Spain will go to the polls in a General Election on Sunday, March 9.

However, one could be forgiven for thinking that the political campaigning started months ago. During the “pre-campaign” which precedes the official 15-day electioneering period running up to polling day, promises made by one party have been ridiculed by another and serious rifts have opened between Church and state.

Although there are 28 political parties vying for some form of power nationwide, the main bout is between the Big Two and forecasters say they are presently equal on points. Naturally, the star players are their leaders, one of whom will be the next President of Spain.

José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is 47 and has led the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) since July 2000. He took his party to victory in Spain’s last General Election in 2004 by beating the incumbent Partido Popular (PP) chaired by José María Aznar.

The ex-President, defeated in the wake of the Madrid train bombings, had already announced he was leaving politics and, in October, 2004, the Chairmanship of the PP passed to Mariano Rajoy Brey. Rajoy will be 53 at the end of this month and, like Zapatero, graduated in law.

 he election outcome will determine the allocation of seats in the two houses of the Cortes Generales (General Courts or Parliament): 350 in the Congreso de los Diputados (Congress of Deputies), the lower house, and 208 of the 264 in the upper house, the Senado (Senate), which will have five more seats than in the last legislature.

Two seats in the Congress are awarded to each of Spain’s 52 constituencies, made up from the 50 provinces and the north African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. The number of deputies per constituency is determined by the population and the remaining seats are then allocated by proportional representation.

In the 2004 general election, the province of Málaga, Spain’s sixth largest constituency in terms of electorate, returned ten deputies to Congress, six PSOE and four PP.

After this election, four provinces - Córdoba, La Coruña, Soria and Vizcaya - will each have one seat fewer in the Congress of Deputies, while another four - Alicante, Almería, Murcia and Toledo - will have an extra seat in the lower house of the Spanish Cortes.

While the Congress is wholly elected, the Senate is partly elected and partly appointed by Spain’s 19 autonomous regions and cities; each has two Senators plus a further one for every million people who live there. Andalucía, for example, had eight seats in 2004 but will have nine in the new legislature.

The Balearics, the Canaries, Cataluña and Madrid will also have an extra seat, contributing to a new total of 56 appointed seats.

The remaining elected seats are split between the provinces which get four each, the larger islands (Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Tenerife) which get three, and the smaller islands (Ibiza-Formentera, Menorca, Fuerteventura, Gomera, Hierro and Lanzarote) which get one. Ceuta and Melilla each have two seats in the Senate.

The general election coincides with an election for the regional parliament, the Junta de Andalucía. The last elections left the 109 deputies in the region with an overall majority of 13 for the PSOE. The Junta also delegates the eight Senators who will represent the region in Madrid, these being shared between the parties according to the number of deputies each has in the Junta.

Only Spanish nationals of voting age can participate in the general and regional elections. Foreign residents, even those from other EU countries who appear on their town hall’s electoral roll, cannot vote on March 9.

As in last year’s local elections, a vote is cast for a party rather than a person and a party must receive at least three per cent of the votes to be included in the allocation of seats. The exceptions are Ceuta and Melilla where candidates fight it out on a “first past the post” system.


 

THE RESULTS

President Zapatero led his party to a second General Election victory on March 9.  Mariano Rajoy, who suffered his second defeat as Partido Popular (PP) leader, is now believed to be under grass roots pressure to resign.

The PSOE party retained power in the vote, but still without an absolute majority.  The socialists won 169 of the 350 seats in Congress, four more than in the 2004 election, while the opposition Partido Popular (PP) took 153, six more than last time.  Their gains came at the expense of the nationalist parties and of Izquierda Unida (IU), the united left grouping which lost three of its five seats.  The IU co-ordinator Gaspar Llamazares immediately announced he would not be standing for re-election by his members.

National turnout was 75.3 per cent, just below the record set in 2004, with the PSOE taking 43.6 per cent of the vote and the PP taking 40.1 per cent.

In the Senate, the PP have the largest group with 101 seats, one fewer than in 2004, but without an absolute majority of the 208-seat body.  The PSOE have 89 seats, an increase of eight, with 18 others shared by the minor parties.  The remaining 56 seats are decided by indirect election by the 17 regional assemblies.

In the vote for the regional assembly in Andalucía which was taken on the same day, the PP made a great surge forward, although it was not enough to beat the socialists.  The PSOE led by Manuel Chaves lost five seats, but maintained their absolute majority with 56 of the 109 seat body.  The PP on 47 seats gained ten, while the joint IU and Green Party group, IULV-CA, retained its six seats.  The casualty here was Andalucían Coalition, CA, which lost all of its five seats.

Some individual eastern Málaga municipality results for the two main parties in the General Election with the winner highlghted in red :
 
Town PSOE % PP %
Alcaucín 53.16 35.79
Algarrobo 44.31 43.07
Antequera 53.51 38.32
Cómpeta 43.84 47.90
Frigiliana 39.48 40.35
Málaga (city) 45.78 44.88
Nerja 46.33 44.97
Periana 60.89 24.67
Rincón de la V 43.45 47.39
Riogordo 57.76 34.41
Torrox 40.21 40.13
Vélez-Málaga 44.19 46.45
Viñuela 64.88 28.14

   
In this year’s campaigning, the economy is clearly the key battleground. During December, the European statistics agency, Eurostat, published data which showed that people in Spain were better off per head than their Italian counterparts.

President Zapatero seized the news eagerly and boasted that his country would overtake France and possibly Germany within five years. However, the downturn in the construction industry has cast a shadow over these ideals.

In 2006, the building sector accounted for 13 per cent of all employment and 60 per cent of bank credit was connected to property. Two years ago, Spain was using half of all the cement in Europe to build more new homes than Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France and Germany – combined. The construction industry accounted for 13 per cent of all employment and 60 per cent of bank lending was connected to property.

Now, half the country’s estate agents are no longer in business according to API, the estate agents’ group, while the IPE business school in Málaga has estimated there will be 500,000 unsold homes by the end of this month, a figure roughly equal to the number built in the average year. As a result of promoters and developers drawing in their horns, unemployment shot up by six per cent in January - the largest monthly rise in a decade - while inflation in December at 4.3 per cent was at its highest level for more than ten years.

Banks, too, with €290billion tied up in outstanding advances connected to construction are worried. Loans are being cut and credit is drying up, with experts blaming Spain’s weak spot: its dependence on foreign credit.

The Congreso de Los Diputados in Madrd
(Photo : Jon Peatey)


However, attempting to calm the panic, the Bank of Spain’s governor, Miguel Angel Ordoñez, told Parliament that the country’s financial system was “immensely solid,” while President Zapatero described his outlook on the economy as “optimistic”. He says he expects it to grow by at least three per cent this year, although the latest official figure shows a drop in expectations from 3.3 to 3.1 per cent. However, the PP claims it would generate growth for the Spanish economy of 3.8 per cent in the year 2011. Sr Rajoy has accused the President of not telling the truth about the economy, “just as he failed to do following the ETA attack on Barajas airport in Madrid”, and says the PP would lower corporation tax from 32.5 to 25 per cent to help the business sector.

The PP has also promised a crackdown on immigration with new rules applied to anyone from non-EU countries who arrives in Spain or when their residency permit is due for renewal. They want a commitment to respect national laws and customs, to learn the language and to leave after an unspecified time if work cannot be found. Any such foreigner would be thrown out if they were found guilty of a crime (which, say critics, means that an estimated 76,000 individuals would have to leave immediately) and the party said it hoped they would also be denied entry to other EU states.


 The PSOE, however, has been critical of the plan. Interior Minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, said it was “smoke with a smell of xenophobia,” while Ecuador’s National Federation in Spain said such ideas had been developed, “only in Nazi Germany and during apartheid in South Africa”.

Sr Rajoy’s announcement of plans to plant 500 million trees across Spain in four years immediately caused confusion. Mathematicians calculated that this means 14,270 plantings every hour while the Ministry of the Environment reasoned that it would be difficult to achieve the target as there is simply not enough free space available in Spain. More green promises from the PP include new biodiesel-powered government vehicles and a proposal to the EU to reduce IVA on new, energy-efficient cars.

A major row erupted between the Catholic church and the state at the end of January after a number of Bishops asked voters to support a party which promises not to negotiate with terrorists. The statement from the Spanish Episcopal Commission urged voters to act “responsibly” and support parties which do not recognise “explicitly or implicitly” a terrorist group as a political negotiator.

This was seen by the PSOE as a reference to their negotiations with ETA and a call from the Church to vote for the PP. In response, the socialists described the use of terrorism as an electioneering tool as “immoral”. President Zapatero said the Bishops had “fallen into temptation” by using terrorism in this way.

But, explained the Bishops, the only words the Church uses are those of Christ which will never be quiet or silenced, despite any attempts to do so. José Blanco, number two in the PSOE hierarchy, said that nothing would be the same between Church and state after the elections, now that the Church hierarchy is constantly, “looking for confrontation with the legitimate government of Spain”.


The usual pre-election tempters have been issued. President Zapatero has promised a payment of €400 in June 2009 to “all the workers and pensioners who pay income tax”. The “progressive” hand-out, he said, was possible because of government savings and would stimulate the Spanish economy. The initiative will benefit 13 million people and cost €5billion, although the status of self-employed workers in the deal remains unclear. He has also promised that minimum pensions will rise, with speculation that a single person’s will increase from around €500 to €700, and a couple’s from about €650 to €850.

Sr Rajoy, however, has caused offence amongst gay voters by promising to revoke the legislation which allows same-sex couples to adopt children, adding that he would wait for the Constitutional Court’s response on the PP’s appeal against the gay marriage law. These comments prompted the formation of a pro-Zapatero group from the arts and sports worlds. High profile names, including film director Pedro Almodóvar, called for voters to support the PSOE to avoid a return of the “lying, humiliating crowd, which believes, in its stupidity, that we are all more stupid than they are”. They talked of fighting “against the sadness of the right, in support of happiness”.


 Zapatero and Rajoy met face to face
in a television debate on TVE1 on February 25,
the first of its kind for 15 years.
Over 13 million viewers are estimated to have watched
the encounter which has been criticised by
the other political parties as being unfair to them
and serving only to increase the dominance
of the PSOE and the PP. 

Click here to watch the full 90 minute programme.

Amongst other promises, the PSOE want to raise the ceiling for child benefit making it available to 400,000 more families, increase paternity leave to four weeks, offer part-time work to parents of under-12s, and provide more school places for the under-3s.

Controversially, the socialists say they will open a debate on modifying Spain’s abortion law to make access to the procedure equal for all and to give legal protection to both the patient and the medical professionals. In response to an increase in teenage pregnancies, they want the morning-after pill to be available over the counter and free of charge, while domestic violence is to be addressed by expelling any foreigner found guilty of such crimes for ten years. President Zapatero is also promising to create two million jobs over four years.

The PP, meantime, has pledged to create 2.2 million jobs by 2011. It wants to reduce surgery waiting lists to 30 days maximum and make dental health available to all, starting with children and the over-65s. The party suggests lowering the penal age for repeat offenders from 18 to as low as 12 years.

It wants to increase the number of working women to 68 per cent and, controversially, is promising positive discrimination for them in tax matters which would result in women retaining €75 a month more than men.


Sr Rajoy has also promised that a PP win will be followed by an average reduction in income tax of 16 per cent, with just three tax bands – 20, 30 and 40 per cent – compared with the present four – 24, 28, 37 and 43 per cent. In addition, the PP propose a zero rate for anyone earning less than €16,000 per year which will benefit an estimated 58 per cent of the population, including Spain’s seven million “mileuristas” (those who earn less than €1,000 a month) who make up a third of the country’s workforce.

Even if a voter can’t decide between the PSOE and the PP, there’s plenty of choice elsewhere. In the province of Málaga, over 20 parties are battling it out for the province’s 1.1 million votes. These include RCN which is calling for the legalisation of cannabis for medicinal use, PACMA advocating harmony between man and animals, the Trotsky followers of the POSI, the AXJ reformers who want the legal system changed and PUM+J whose members seek a solution to world poverty. Málaga province will return four Senators and 16 Deputies.

In the past four years, the Zapatero administration has withdrawn Spanish troops from Iraq, aborted a controversial negotiation with ETA, created courts to hear domestic violence cases, legalised same-sex marriages and encouraged illegal immigrants to regularise their position with an amnesty. However, the President has been widely criticised for distancing Spain from the centre of world politics. His decision on Iraq, for example, has virtually severed all contact with the US, while France and Germany failed to welcome Spain as an equal member of the anti-American club, as he had expected they would. Critics label him as the most isolated leader in Europe.

In the coming years, Spain must become more competitive, tackle corruption and drugs, reform inflexible employment regulations, improve educational standards, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address its position as top supplier of arms to Sub-Saharan Africa. So say the World Bank, World Economic Forum, Transparency International, UN World Drug Report, Heritage Foundation, OECD, UN and Oxfam International.

To what extent she rises to meet any of these challenges depends on the outcome of the Zapatero v Rajoy prize fight on March 9. And in this match, the gloves are already off.

DAVE JAMIESON