Spain Surrenders
from Washington Post reprinted

MADRID - Spaniards voted yesterday to remove the party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar from power, apparently blaming his staunch backing of the U.S.-led war in Iraq for the bombing attacks that killed 200 people on Thursday.

While polls taken before the bombings had given Aznar's Popular Party a comfortable lead, voters overwhelmingly endorsed candidates from the opposition Socialists, whose leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has promised to immediately withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq, redirect Spain's foreign policy away from the United States and restore good relations with European allies such as France and Germany that had opposed the Iraq war.

The voting came after a week when more than 10 million people took to the streets to express outrage and grief, many of them questioning whether Aznar's policies had made the country a target for terrorism. Voter turnout, particularly among the young, was high, and many said a desire to oust Aznar's party had brought them to the polls.

The Popular Party's loss deprives the Bush administration of one of its most solid allies in Europe. Aznar has been a frequent visitor to the White House and to the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

When the going gets tough, the Spainish get surrendering.

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With 99.4 percent of the ballots counted, the Socialists had 42.6 percent of the vote, about 164 seats in the next parliament, compared with 37.7 percent, and 148 seats, for the Popular Party. The results would leave the Socialists short of an absolute majority of 176 seats, but would allow them to govern by forming a coalition with smaller regional parties.
While Aznar was stepping down after eight years as prime minister, the results represented a bitter personal blow, as he had hoped to hand over power to his hand-picked successor, Mariano Rajoy, who had promised to continue Aznar's pro-American foreign policy. In recent months, controversy over the Iraq war, deeply unpopular here, had receded as a major issue, and more voters appeared focused on Spain's robust economy.

But voters turned against the Popular Party after a series of coordinated bomb blasts ripped through four crowded commuter trains at rush hour Thursday morning, and government officials immediately blamed the Basque separatist group known as ETA - while dismissing the possibility that the attacks might have been carried out by Islamic extremists linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. As mounting evidence pointed to Islamic extremists, many Spaniards criticized the government for withholding the information to avoid a backlash against the unpopular decision to deploy troops to Iraq.

The government conceded defeat at 10:30 last night, just two and a half hours after the polls closed and after exit polls and early official returns showed the Popular Party trailing badly. Government officials and spokesman promised to work with the new government for a smooth transition.

"The Popular Party accepts the result of the ballot," said Rajoy, speaking to supporters with Aznar at his side. Referring to the tumult of the past 72 hours, Rajoy added, "The Spanish people have eloquently shown that they can behave with civility, and this has been a tribute to the memory of those who have fallen."

At Socialist Party headquarters, celebrations of the unexpected victory were subdued. Zapatero called for a minute of silence for the victims. "My immediate priority will be to combat all kinds of terrorism," he said. "The terrorists must know that they will confront all of us together. We will win."

Among government officials and supporters, there was bitterness at the notion that by stoking popular fears, the attackers who planted the bombs might have altered the result of the election, and could force a staunch ally of the United States to shift its foreign policy.

"The terrorists have killed 200 people and defeated the government - they have achieved all their objectives," said Gustavo de Arustegui, a Popular Party member of parliament and foreign policy spokesman for the government. "I think the terrorist attacks were politically planned," he said. "We have transformed terrorists into political actors with this."

In a videotape discovered in a parking lot trash container late Saturday, a man calling himself Abu Dujan Al Afgani and describing himself as the head of al-Qaida's military wing in Europe, said Thursday's attacks were a response to Spain's "collaboration with the criminal Bush and his allies," according to a transcripts released by the Interior Ministry. The speaker on the videotape also warned, "If you do not stop your collaboration, more and more blood will flow."

Aznar's embrace of the Bush administration's policies in Europe helped raise Spain's international profile, and his supporters said Spain, under Aznar, had once again become a major player on the world stage. But anti-American sentiment runs deep, and Aznar's closeness to Bush - and his decision to send Spanish troops to Iraq - became a political liability. Tens of thousands of Spaniards took to the streets to protest the Iraq War, and polls last year showed 90 percent of the people here opposed the war.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking before the results were announced, said the attacks would not necessarily cause a change in Spain's policies toward the United States. "I don't think the case has been made that this will cause Spain to step back from the war on terrorism," Powell told ABC's This Week.

The Popular Party appeared to suffer yesterday from two separate, if related, fallouts from the terrorist attacks. First was a sense that the government was not fully forthcoming with the information it had. And, secondly, as the al-Qaida link became clearer, there was a sense of outrage that Aznar's pro-American policies and dispatch of troops to Iraq had put Spain on the firing line of Islamic extremists seeking reprisals.

"I think the attacks woke up the Spanish people, who did not want to join the war in Iraq,"said Maria Requeme, 27, who works as a debt collector. She said she had long ago decided to support the Socialists, but knows others who only switched their votes in the last days.

posted by prof_booty | 08:33 AM