SPAIN:Spain's prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, was yesterday digesting his first defeat at the polls since he brought his Socialist party to power three years ago.
The Socialists were narrowly beaten at municipal elections on Sunday, with the opposition right-wing People's Party edging ahead in the national vote thanks to a resounding victory in Madrid.
The defeat comes just 10 months before a general election in Spain, in which Mr Zapatero hopes to win a second term.
Although the margin of the loss was narrow, with the People's Party winning 35.6 per cent of the vote against 34.9 per cent for the Socialists, no Spanish political party has won a general election for 24 years after losing local elections. The voting was the first poll test for Mr Zapatero since he won the general election in March 2004, three days after suspected Islamic militants killed 191 people in bombs attacks on Madrid commuter trains.
The defeat appeared to bear out a slow decline in his party's popularity over the past year. Poll predictions however are difficult, with abstentions running at 36 per cent and the inclusion of more than 300,000 voters from other EU countries, who will not vote in the general election.
Observers will now be watching Mr Zapatero's pre-election moves closely. A first casualty of this defeat could be his strategy of trying to broker a peace deal with Eta, the armed Basque separatist group, despite angry opposition from the PP.
Eta was already widely predicted to take up arms again after the election in anger over a continuing ban on its main political ally, Batasuna. The armed group broke its ceasefire in December by killing two Ecuadorians in a bomb blast at Madrid's Barajas airport. - (Guardian service)