Virtual tie in Spanish polls

Ruling Socialists and opposition conservatives in Spain fought to a virtual tie in local elections, highlighting deep divisions in a country torn over its Basque conflict, terrorism and other issues.

In regional voting also held yesterday in 13 of 17 regions, the two parties retained most of the respective strongholds, although the conservatives saw their majority in Navarra, a region bordering the Basque country, slip into jeopardy due to a strong rise by a Basque nationalist party.

The voting was the first big test of voter sentiment towards Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero since he came to power in March 2004 after the Madrid train bombings by suspected Islamic militants.

The election was seen as a rehearsal for March 2008 general elections.

In the municipal contest, with 96%t of the votes counted, the opposition Popular Party had 36.63%, compared to 36.05% for Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialists.

The margin was roughly the same size as the one by which his party won the last local elections, in 2003.

The conservatives claimed victory, and momentum heading into the bigger race next year.

“The Popular Party has won the elections,” Angel Acebes, the party’s number two official told supporters. Besides the total number of municipal votes, the party won more provincial capitals and controls more regional legislatures than the Socialists, Acebes said.

“This is the electoral map,” he said. “We are the party of trust, the party of the future.”

In other races, the conservatives fattened their cushion in the Madrid town hall and in the Madrid regional legislature, and held on to Valencia, Spain’s third largest city. Socialists won in Seville, Barcelona and other traditionally Socialists cities and towns.

In the Basque region and neighbouring Navarra, also home to many Basque nationalists, police put down protests by people angry over court rulings that barred most of the candidates endorsed by Batasuna, the outlawed political wing of the armed separatist group ETA.

During the campaign opposition leader Mariano Rajoy said Zapatero had betrayed Spaniards by negotiating with ETA in a once-promising peace process that ultimately made Zapatero look silly with the December bombing, a day after the prime minister said the peace was in good shape.

Attention was focused on the Basque country even though the regional legislature was not up for grabs, just the town halls. This was also the case in Catalonia, Andalusia and Galicia.

Batasuna says the absence of its candidates would damage the peace process, and ETA warned that it would take it into account if Batasuna-linked candidates were not allowed to run.

During the campaign, Zapatero dug into Spain’s still-open wound of the 2004 terror bombings to depict the Popular Party as a party that lied and could not be trusted. The Popular Party was in power at the time of the massacre and blamed ETA even as evidence mounted of Islamic involvement.

Zapatero’s Socialists won the general elections three days after the bombings in what was widely seen as punishment of the conservatives for misleading voters by blaming ETA.