Spain's Elections 3 different points of view

THE ECONOMIST

Rajoy ahoy

IT WAS a victory of epic proportions. Not since Spaniards turned massively to Felipe González’s Socialists to run a country threatened by coup plotters, terrorism and inflation in 1982 has anyone been handed such parliamentary firepower as Mariano Rajoy of the centre-right People’s Party (PP).

Given a perfect storm of rampant unemployment, zero growth and soaring debt yields this time around, a victory for the opposition was assured. But the ruling Socialists were obliterated, losing a third of their seats in the worst result since the return of democracy following Francisco Franco’s death in 1975. The PP now holds 186 of the 350 seats in Parliament, 11 of 17 regional governments and three-fifths of town halls. It has a say in the running of two other regions, and looks set to take control of the populous, and almost eternally Socialist, region of Andalusia in March. Moreover, given the PP’s hierarchical structure, Mr Rajoy will have little trouble keeping his party in line. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the current prime minister, will remain in office for another month, meaning he and Mr Rajoy may be forced into a de facto national-unity government over the next few weeks to keep markets at bay. But once the PP takes over, Mr Rajoy will hold nearly untrammelled power.

How will Spain’s new leader choose to wield it? Mr Rajoy is dogged—he managed to overcome the PP’s internal infighting during seven years in opposition—but is neither especially combative nor given to dramatic gestures. And he has given precious few details of his plan for fixing Spain. In his victory speech, he appealed to national pride and heroism in difficult times, recognising the “immense task ahead” and that problems need to be addressed “as soon as possible”.

Indeed they do. At one point last week Spain’s ten-year bonds yielded a whopping 7%, and so far today the rate is rising again. Mr Rajoy says Spain will be “the most compliant and the most watchful” country in Europe, code for deficit targets and austerity. This year’s goal of 6% looks like a stretch despite sterling efforts by Elena Salgado, the outgoing finance minister, and next year’s 4.4% target may require dramatic spending cuts. But fiscal contraction will only exacerbate the economic downturn—23% of Spaniards are currently out of work, and growth has ground to a halt—unless it is accompanied by deeper reforms. Labour law is brutally unfair to the young, the multi-tiered bureaucracy is highly inefficient and the banks have fallen ill from their indigestible loans to real-estate developers.

Mr Rajoy insists that the PP “hasn’t promised miracles”. But, scared of turning voters away with too much talk of cuts, he has implicitly done just that. He has already pledged to protect pensions, which are linked to inflation, and to reduce taxes for small and medium-sized businesses. How he would finance these promises remains a mystery.

If Mr Rajoy does decide to get serious, he will be hard to stop. With backing from like-minded reformists in the Catalan nationalist Convergence and Union coalition and in the Basque Nationalist Party, he can claim support from MPs representing nearly half the Spanish electorate. And trade unions, who have blocked meaningful labour reform until now, have much less bargaining power than they have had in the past, even if they threaten a general strike.

Compared with southern Europe’s other troubled economies, Spain has much to be proud of. Its protesters are determined not to use rocks or firebombs. It has much less debt than Italy or Greece. And unlike those peers, who are now led by unelected technocrats, it has chosen its own captain to guide it through the storm. If Captain Rajoy cannot now steer Spain to safety, who can?

THE SUN

Spanish election: Socialists toppled

Conservatives sweep to power as voters act on economy

SPAIN'S ruling socialist party suffered a crushing general election defeat last night as voters punished them over unemployment and the economic crisis.

The opposition conservatives swept to power with an absolute majority and their best result ever.

PSOE leaders conceded defeat to their Popular Party (PP) rivals when they went nearly 16 points ahead with 80 per cent of the votes counted.

Outgoing PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's party was set to lose a record 60 seats, heading for a final tally of around 110 seats compared to around 186 seats for the PP.

The result was being hailed as the worst ever for Spain's socialists in 23 years of democracy.

It paved the way for massive budget cuts by PM-in-waiting Mariano Rajoy to stave off an EU bail-out and ward off financial predators looking to capitalize on the country's economic weakness.

Borrowing

The pre-election favourite to replace Zapatero - who was dubbed Mr Bean by critics of his seven-year rule because of his likeness to the comic fool - has already warned all but OAP pensions are touchable.

Nearly five million people - a staggering 21.5 per cent of the active population - are jobless.

Borrowing rates last week hit their highest levels since the euro was introduced, impounding the country's gloom and sparking fears it would be fourth in line for EU rescue cash after Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Zapatero was booed as he went to vote early in the day.

The economic crisis and the scourge of unemployment dominated the campaign, which followed seven years of minority socialist rule.

Former Home Secretary Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, the PSOE party's candidate for the country's top job, was criticised for leading a lacklustre campaign and failing to distance himself from Zapatero's legacy by convincing voters he has the solution to Spain's problems as his own man.

Admitting defeat late last night he conceded: "This has been a bad result for my party."

Around 700 British companies operating in Spain, the UK's seventh-largest trading partner, are suffering from its shrinking economy and will now look to a fresh government to boost the nation's fortunes.

Rajoy, 56, who comes from the north west region of Galicia, has already admitted he can promise no quick fix.

Most observers expect the unemployment rate - the worst in western Europe - to surpass the five million mark.

Speaking as her party's triumph became clear, PP campaign director Ana Mato said: "Our only objective tomorrow if our win is confirmed will be to beat the crisis and unemployment."

Mariano Rajoy, addressing the nation following his win, admitted: "Spain is at a decisive moment in its history."It's no secret we're going to govern in the most delicate situation we have faced for 30 years."

Promising Spain would be a loyal member of the European Union and pledging to tackle unemployment and the country's budget deficit, he added: "We will stop being a problem and became once again part of the solution."

THE GUARDIAN

The Spanish election is a mandate for the indignados

For Spain's indignados, last Sunday's election delivered a mandate for struggle and resistance

Proposals for voting strategies proliferated in the runup to Sunday's general election in Spain. People wrote "ballot box" on drains and toilets; others suggested cutting out the middlemen and depositing votes directly into bank machines. This campaign of ballot spoiling wasn't a subcultural anarchist prank, but a reflection of extraordinarily widespread popular disaffection. A typical sight during a pre-election protest was a respectable middle-aged man with a cigarette in one hand and a marker pen in the other going from municipal bin to municipal bin writing "Vote here" on the lids."They don't represent us" and "They are all the same" – the slogans of the indignados (the Spanish progenitors of the Occupy movement, who have mobilised hundreds of thousands across the country) – are now mainstream.
In contrast to the political parties, the indignados (the "outraged") say: "They want your vote; we want your opinion." They question the very legitimacy of electoral politics, seeing a hollowing out of representative democracy that the eurozone crisis is rendering critical. In their words, "the polls are in the safe custody of the European Central Bank".
On election day the indignados got protest-voting trending on Twitter with a three-pronged strategy: to abstain, spoil one's ballot, or attempt to break out of the bipartisan system by voting for a minority party. Rather than just staying at home, people actively registered disgust at the choices on offer, and the number of spoiled ballots on Sunday was double that of the last election in 2008 – numbering, with abstentions and blank votes, 11 million: more than voted for the rightwing victors, the Partido Popular.
Electoral disaffection reflects the harsh economic climate of Spain, with an unemployment rate of 46% for those under 30. Since the crisis voters have seen the socialist PSOE government renege on social policies and adopt the harsh austerity programmes of the right; as with New Labour, its traditional voter base turned away in disgust. It wasn't so much a case of the PP winning a mandate on Sunday, but of the PSOE losing 4.5 million voters.
Meanwhile the rhetoric of the indignados – that democracy is being eroded by the markets – has received unwelcome validation as the world of finance pummels Spain. Just before the election, borrowing costs had jumped to a 14-year high. In the words of Carlos Delclós, a Barcelona indignado: "[The incoming prime minister] Mariano Rajoy's task, at this point, is to try to guess what Merkel or the IMF want him to do before they tell him, so that his decisions look more like his own brilliance, and not the imposed will of dominant supranational institutions. The movement knows this, and I don't think they're going to be fooled into thinking that these elections change anything besides, perhaps, the scale of repression the government is willing to impose."
Leónidas Martín, artist, activist and professor at the University of Barcelona echoes this concern: "The results are perverse, a reflection of the disaffection with democracy." Martín perceives a real danger in this popular disaffection, however. He is "worried by the model of technocratic governments imposed by the markets as in Italy and Greece," he says, because "the markets are incorporating the popular disaffection into their own interests. They say: 'You don't like politicians? You don't like democracy? Very well, we understand you, and we want to help you. Just leave everything to us. We are experts.'"
In the short term, the reality of a rightwing government may well dampen the mood of the indignados. But it is also setting the stage for a massive new wave of protest that will strengthen the movement. By next spring those made unemployed by the crisis will start running out of unemployment benefits. This, combined with stringent new austerity measures and angry unions – whose hands had been tied by their connections to the socialist government, but can now come out fighting – will usher in what looks to be an enormous and potent wave of direct action.
The indignados are playing the long game. Inspiring Occupy tactics in other countries, they have been taking over empty bank-owned properties across the country from Galicia to Andalucia and Madrid to Barcelona. The general assemblies of the encampments they held in the summer are now devolved to local neighbourhoods; the occupied buildings are being used to hold assemblies through the winter months and house those evicted through mortgage defaults. "The answer to the crisis is not apathy or cynicism," says Kike Tudela, a historian and activist. "We have four years of struggle and resistance ahead, and the question is: what will we have after four years? Do we want the socialists back with more neoliberal policies, or something new?"
The indignados are now exploring ideas that go far beyond party politics or even changing electoral law, such as participatory budgets, referendums, election recalls and other forms of citizen-initiated legalisation. "It's a debate we have to have within the movement, but perhaps we can create new political forms from below. We are interested in Latin American models," Tudela says, referring to governments that have resisted the onslaught of neoliberalism in tandem with social movements that hold them to their promises.
This new form of politics that creates effective pathways between social movements and government is vastly ambitious. But as the indignados say: "We are going slowly, because we are going far."