SPAIN: Both the winners and losers in Sunday's election have moved to restore confidence in Spanish democracy, writes Paddy Woodworth in Madrid.
The Socialist Party (PSOE) and its prime minister designate, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, have accepted their unexpected victory on Sunday with grace and without triumphalism.
The electorate has passed judgment on the outgoing government's mishandling of the aftermath of the bombings. Spain's new leaders generally resisted the temptation to further embarrass a Partido Popular (PP) whose credibility had been so severely damaged in a few days.
The PP top brass, meanwhile, took their "punishment" with democratic stoicism. There was no attempt to suggest that the PSOE had somehow stolen the elections due to the unprecedented circumstances of the final days of the campaign. The PP may have sounded authoritarian in its last years in power, but Mariano Rajoy's prompt and full recognition that Mr Zapatero had overtaken him on Sunday night reasserted the Spanish right's democratic credentials.
Mr Rajoy, who had failed to step out from José María Aznar's shadow since the latter virtually appointed him as his successor last November, has paid a heavy price. It is widely believed that Aznar was firmly in control of the PP's deeply damaging attempts to divert public attention from Islamist links to the bombings.
Mr Rajoy is therefore doubly damaged: he is tarnished with a policy that offended millions of Spaniards, and revealed as little more than his master's voice. In these circumstances, his words of loyalty to Mr Aznar on Sunday earned respect even from his critics. He will stay on as PP leader, but winning back public confidence beyond the core electorate will be a daunting task.
The faces at the PP's headquarters in the Calle Génova on Sunday night were not just crestfallen, they were collapsed. Mr Aznar himself must be internally shattered, contemplating the reversal of his reputation in Spain, and in the world, between Thursday and Sunday.
The contrast in mood at the PSOE party offices was striking. Jubilation was muted, naturally enough. Mr Zapatero's first act on acknowledging victory was a minute's silence. But there was no concealing the energetic confidence that suddenly surged through a party which had almost despaired of returning to power in the near future.
Mr Zapatero epitomised this new mood, and has gained in stature with every public appearance since.
After a period when Spain has been deeply divided and the government sometimes appeared to regard opposition as tantamount to treachery, he struck a very inclusive note in his first press conference yesterday.
"I will govern for all Spaniards," he said. "I will listen before taking decisions, and I will always remain receptive to criticism." His government, he continued, "will not manipulate, and will not lie".
These are high standards, which were not met by the previous PSOE administrations of Felipe González, who treated parliament and public opinion with something close to contempt in his final years in power. It will test Mr Zapatero's mettle to maintain them.
He has, however, shown clarity and decisiveness in the set of decisions he presented at yesterday afternoon's press conference. Firstly, he will form a minority government, without direct participation by other parties. But he will have to negotiate sufficient long-term support from smaller parties to allow him to legislate with confidence while 12 votes shy of an absolute majority.
He faces real difficulties here. His only natural allies - and even that is stretching a point - are the former communists and the greens of United Left. But they have only five seats. The main Catalan nationalist party, CiU, has 10 seats, but is well to the right of Zapatero's party on economics. Their equivalent in the Basque Country, the PNV, has seven seats and is more centrist, and had good relations with the PSOE in the 1980s.
In recent years, however, Mr Zapatero's coat-tailing of Mr Aznar on Basque issues and the PNV's controversial espousal of Basque self-determination has opened up a gulf of incomprehension between the two parties.
The other party he might canvass is the Catalan Republic Left (ERC), which saw its representation soar from one to eight seats in this election to become the fourth-biggest force in the Spanish parliament.
That is a remarkable achievement for a party which opposes Spain's well-respected monarchy, breaks a taboo by demanding independence for Catalonia, and was demonised by Mr Aznar after its leader secretly met ETA in January. For all those reasons, however, the ERC would be distinctly embarrassing backers for the PSOE at national level.
Not just the PP, but many PSOE voters, regard the ERC as little better than accomplices of terrorism, even though the Catalan Socialists have accepted it as a partner in the regional government there.
Mr Zapatero will enjoy two advantages in these difficult negotiations, which are likely to last several weeks. One is his undoubted talent for finding a consensus among opposed groups. The other is the goodwill he will enjoy, at least in the short term, from all of these parties.
This is partly due to the exceptional circumstances created by the Madrid bombings. But it is also true that all these parties are united in their hostility to the PP, which has treated each one of them as a dog treats a lamp-post over the last four years.
The new leader's greatest immediate challenges will be the investigation into the Madrid bombings, and developing a strategy to deal with this new terrorist threat. On the first issue, he can be reassured by the fact that the police and intelligence services appear to have done a very professional job since Thursday, despite the bizarre manoeuvres of their political masters.
On the second issue, Mr Zapatero took the bold step yesterday of declaring that Spanish troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of June unless the UN mandate was strengthened there. This is fully in line with PSOE policy, but it will take courage to implement it as it could be seen now as giving in to terrorism, and will arouse formidable ire in Washington.
In that context, it is interesting to note that he stressed yesterday that the main focus of his foreign policy would Europe, Latin America, and the Mediterranean. This is in sharp contrast to Aznar's emphasis on a US alliance but well in keeping with Spain's post-Franco history.