SPAIN: The Spanish opposition failed to capitalise on the weakness of an unpopular government, reports Paddy Woodworth in Bilbao
Politicians always claim to have done well in elections, regardless of the results. Sunday's municipal and regional elections in Spain produced an ambiguous outcome that enables both the main parties to convince their own supporters, at least, that they have achieved their targets.
The centre-right Partido Popular (PP), currently in government, is saying that it fought off a very strong challenge and actually increased its majority in key constituencies such as Madrid city council.
The centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE) says it has reversed an eight-year pattern of electoral defeat, and has emerged as the overall winner of the elections, in terms of the total number of municipal votes cast.
"They wanted to wipe us off the map," said the PP leader and Prime Minister, José María Aznar early yesterday morning, "and now we are stronger than ever". There is some truth in that. With a significant rise in participation, the PP did gain 200,000 votes more than in 1999.
But the PSOE leapfrogged the PP increase, boosting its vote by 500,000 to almost 8 million, a clear if hardly earth-shattering 200,000 lead over the ruling party. The new Socialist leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapero, yesterday declared this "indisputable victory" was "a good start" in the battle to win the forthcoming general elections, due within a year.
The reality, in both cases, is a little more complex. The narrow overall victory for the PSOE is the absolute minimum Mr Zapatero needs to stand a chance of leading his party back to government. He was campaigning in very favourable conditions.
Mr Aznar's party is not only suffering the normal wear and tear of seven years in power. The PP has had a particularly bad year, encountering massive hostility in street demonstrations, and in opinion polls, to its handling of the war in Iraq, to which Mr Aznar gave high-profile support, and the oil spillage disaster off the coast of Galicia.
These issues gave Mr Zapatero a head start at the hustings. But after weeks of sound and fury, these elections, which often had the strident tone of a crisis referendum, have produced no clear verdict on either the war or the oil spillage.
It does not bode well for the PSOE that Mr Aznar was able to whittle the left's initial advantage back down to something close to a dead heat.
To do this he used some of the traditional weapons of the Spanish right, sounding the alarm over a "Red" threat from the PSOE and its more radical allies in the United Left coalition, and warning that a left victory might endanger the unity of the Spanish state itself.
If Mr Aznar really believes that United Left represents an old fashioned communist peril, he must be happy that UI's already low vote actually slipped in these elections, a severe blow to a movement that seemed to have reinvented itself during the heady anti-war demonstrations in March.
But while Mr Aznar can certainly take some legitimate satisfaction in beating back the left, the final result is hardly a ringing endorsement of his leadership or his controversial policies. This must be particularly disappointing given that this is his last outing as party leader.
And while he would never admit it, these elections show that his hardline policy of confrontation in the Basque Country has reached a brick wall. His efforts to displace the dominant Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) received yet another rebuff from the electorate, as the PNV registered one of its best-ever results. Meanwhile, supporters of Batasuna, the party linked to the terrorists of ETA and banned by Aznar´s government, claim well over 100,000 spoiled votes. This indicates, as Gerry Adams might put it, that the radical nationalists "haven't gone away, you know".
The internal battle to succeed Mr Aznar, which must be resolved in the next few months, will now hot up. Mr Aznar's performance in this campaign indicates he is still in control of the party, and will have a significant say in the forthcoming debate.
The elections have thrown up a new potential candidate, a strong contender against the three rather grey cabinet ministers currently in the running. The dark horse is Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, whose decisive victory in Madrid could be his springboard to the very top in Spanish politics.