Anti-government protests today marked otherwise smooth voting in regional and local elections in Spain that pollsters expect to punish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar for his support for the Iraq war and his handling of the Prestige oil tanker disaster.
Spain's 34.5 million voters were being asked to choose representatives to the country's 8,111 local councils, and 13 of its 17 regional parliaments.
Opinion polls show Spain's opposition Socialists (PSOE) leading for the first time since Aznar took power in 1996, riding on opposition to the war and bashing his Popular Party for an alleged lack of interest in social issues.
Voters out early in several cities defied election rules by openly wearing anti-war - and anti-Aznar - stickers and badges into the polling stations in Madrid and the northeastern city of Zaragoza, where electoral officials were forced to intervene to demand the removal of a "No to war" banner from the front of a polling station.
In Madrid's working class Villaverde district, polling officials loyal to the opposition Izquierda Unida (IU), or united left, were involved in confrontations with Popular Party staff who demanded they remove the anti-war stickers they were wearing.
Ser radio reported that another sticker-wearing IU member was thrown out of a polling station in northwestern Galicia province, where some voters wore stickers declaring "Never again" - a reference to November's Prestige oil tanker disaster, when the stricken vessel broke up and leaked 40,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil into the sea and onto the local coastline.
Mr Aznar and his wife Ms Ana Botella, who is making her political debut as number three on the conservatives' list for Madrid city council, appeared at the polling station near their Moncloa Palace residence mid-morning on Sunday to cast their ballots.
One year before he is due to retire, Mr Aznar has thrown himself into his party's regional and local election campaign in a bid to claw back some of the support it has lost over Iraq and the Prestige.
Both issues have prompted anti-government street demonstrations of unprecedented magnitude in the past six months.
This month's Moroccan bombings have also become an electoral issue, with the Socialists saying Mr Aznar's hawkish foreign policies had made Spaniards targets of extremists.
Basque radical parties were absent from today's vote for the first time in 25 years, barred by Spain's courts for their alleged links with the armed ETA separatist group.
In the northern Basque Country, the election was preceeded by petrol bomb attacks on the home of a Socialist councillor in the district of Renteria and a branch of the BBVA bank, in which no-one was injured.
Separately, a booby-trapped parcel exploded early yesterday in the Mediterranean port of Valencia, injuring four people, but mayor Ms Rita Barbera said the incident would not affect the polls.
More than 100,000 police officers have been mobilised for the vote.
AFP