POLITICAL ROUND UP

The aftermath Last week's local and regional elections produced few surprises. Those who were tipped to win, won. The only - mainly expected - upsets were in the regional government elections. In the Canary Islands, the Socialists (PSOE) ousted the main opposition party, Partido Popular (PP), and in the Balearic Islands, coalition negotiations were still going on at the time of writing in an effort to keep the PP in power. In Navarre, the Union del Pueblo Navarro (UPN) - the equivalent of the PP - got the most votes but not a majority, leaving the Socialists in a position to form a coalition with the other smaller parties. However, this is an exceptionally sensitive area. The Basque terrorist group ETA and its political wing, the banned Batasuna party, have made it clear they want Navarre to form part of an independent Basque state, mainly because it will give them a frontier with France. Polls show that most non-Basques would not like that. Now it looks as if Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero may decide against entering into a coalition with pro-ETA or pro-independence parties and allow the UPN to rule as a minority, which would dispel accusations that he wants to hand the region over to ETA. This would be the most sensible decision because when all the votes were in and counted, it turned out that the PP won some 166,000 more votes than the Socialists. It doesn't sound a lot now, but it could make a big difference next March. One newspaper extrapolated the voting figures and concluded that the PP would win the next election by 147 seats to 146 for the Socialists. The overall conclusion of most political observers is that Sr Zapatero should sit down and do some serious thinking especially as the people of the city he governs from - Madrid - gave the PP historically overwhelming majorities - for Esperanza Aguirre as president of the Madrid Community (regional government) and Alberto Ruiz Gallardon, who repeats as Mayor. In an effort to wipe the PP from the political map, for the past three years Sr Zapatero and his cohorts have been doing everything possible to make people believe that the PP is the Franco dictatorship in disguise. They are quick to point out that many PP politicos come from Franco-supporting families. What they fail to mention is how many of their own come from a similar background. They came up with the Historical Memory Law, reopening the old wounds caused by a civil war that ended 68 years ago. They have tried to make out that all Republicans were "good" and all the rest were fire-breathing, blood-thirsty monsters who enjoyed torturing little children to death. What they never mention is that it was tacitly agreed after Franco's death not to indulge in show trials of the dictator's supporters had been involved in atrocities for the simple reason that a lot of Republicans would end up in the dock too. For example, the man who led the Communist Party when it was legalised after Franco's death - Santiago Carrillo - was the commissar in charge of Madrid when 5,000 men and women suspected of sympathising with Franco were rounded up and shot. It must also be noted that Sr Carrillo fully supported the return to democracy and the monarchy, and was booted out of the party for his pains. Then we have Iraq. Joining the allies in the Iraq war was the biggest mistake former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar ever made. It was very unpopular with the Spanish people and Sr Zapatero made the withdrawal of Spanish troops his main commitment during the March 2004 election campaign. The day after he took over, he recalled the troops, and he's never stopped reminding people of this ever since. It had become so boring that just a few days before the May 27th elections, one of the allies who helped him form a government, Izquierda Unida general secretary Gaspar Llamazares, wondered aloud just how much more mileage Sr Zapatero expected to get out of the Iraq war. The same could be asked about the PP's "inability to come to terms with losing the March 2004 election" - which it had been tipped to win. Whenever the PP dares to criticise the government, which is most days, the first thing the PM or his spokesperson says is: "The trouble with you lot is you can't get over your election defeat". In fact, the odds were in favour of the PP until the morning of March 11th 2004, when bombs blew up several trains in Madrid during the rush hour, killing 91 people and injuring more than 1,700. The Socialists seized on the fact that the bombs had been set by Islamist not ETA terrorists to bring out the anti-war vote on Sunday, March 14th. What they never mention is that their followers attacked PP party headquarters in several major cities on Saturday, March 13th, a day on which all electioneering was prohibited in order to give people time to "reflect" on their vote the following day. All the pro-Socialist TV stations - that is, the majority - repeatedly showed images of the disturbances, which were encouraged by text messages that apparently originated in the party's headquarters in Madrid. These tactics have not helped Sr Zapatero. In fact they may even have been counterproductive. The same old song gets boring eventually. The big question now is: Will he be able to change his tune?