Spain’s political prospects: The battle of Madrid

Date: 01/11/03

Foreshadowing the next election

“WHOEVER wins Madrid, will win the general election in March.” So said José Luis Zapatero, leader of Spain's opposition Socialists some months ago. Now that the centre-right People's Party has regained control of Madrid, Mr Zapatero has modified his position: he had expected a far worse result, and his party is in better shape than ever for the spring elections. Yet it is his original forecast that may prove the more accurate.

The lessons to be learned from Madrid are far from clear. The poll was a rerun, because the Socialists and the United Left had failed to form a government after winning the elections in May. Two Socialists refused to support the coalition and fled, amid allegations that they were paid off by Madrid's booming construction industry. In the months before the rerun Mr Zapatero did not do enough to convince Socialist voters that he had taken his party firmly in hand. In particular, he fumbled the chance to punish José María Aznar, the prime minister, for his hugely unpopular support of the war in Iraq and for his mishandling of the Prestige oil spill.

Even so the Madrid result does not necessarily guarantee a victory for Mr Aznar's recently anointed successor, Mariano Rajoy, in five months' time. The win was not as good for the People's Party as had been forecast by recent opinion polls. The party won 51 seats, thereby clinching Spain's most populous region by just a three-seat majority.

The new regional president, Esperanza Aguirre, 51, described as “unremarkable” by a former Aznar aide, does little to lift the spirits. She is Spain's second female regional leader, who has been handed a reprieve after rather ordinary stints as education minister and president of the senate. She has been harried in the press for being frivolous, marrying a count and being furtive about her wealth. “I do not intend to exhibit assets nor do a striptease,” was the tart response she gave to her critics. She is nevertheless one of the People's Party's few liberal ideologues, once spoken of as a Spanish Margaret Thatcher.

The most positive result for the centre-right in Madrid is that a wedge has been driven between the supposed sins of Mr Aznar and those of his successor. “Given that the elections lie halfway between the May ballot and the general elections next year, the Madrid defeat is a worrying one for the Socialists,” the conservative daily newspaper ABC opined in an editorial. “If the war in Iraq and the Prestige disaster didn't produce a change in May, the elections in Madrid proved they were no longer valid arguments.” For the left, Mr Zapatero's leadership has withstood an uncomfortable test that he had to pass to run in March - but there was precious little other consolation.

Recent opinion polls show the People's Party with a good chance of either winning a slim outright majority in March or of being forced, once again, into an alliance with a regional party such as the Catalan nationalists. It is in Spain's regions, rather than the capital, where the tone for the elections is being set. The regional Basque leader, Juan José Ibarretxe, formally announced his plan for “a Basque state associated with Spain” last week. The People's Party fears that the normally quieter nationalists of Catalonia may be emboldened by the Basque initiative. With Catalan elections due on November 16th the tone is becoming shrill.

Foreshadowing the 2004 general election in Spain.