SPAIN: Spaniards go to the polls on Sunday after an election campaign that has been bitter but whose outcome seems predictable. However, recent opinion polls show the result is still to play for, writes Paddy Woodworth.
There is danger for any party in starting an election race with a comfortable lead. Spain's centre-right Partido Popular, in power for the last eight years, and for the last four with an absolute majority, has long looked the clear winner of next Sunday's contest.
Polls since last weekend, however, indicate that the conservatives may have overplayed what has been described as the politics of fear. Moderate, centrist voters seem to have found the PP's increasingly strident right-wing tone discordant, and are unlikely to give them a free hand for another term. It is an equally slim chance, however, that the centre will give the Socialist Party (PSOE) more votes than the PP, much less an absolute majority.
The irony is that the PP could probably have held a decisive lead, had it simply played to its own considerable strengths. The Spanish economy has done well under PP stewardship. Unemployment has halved since the PSOE was last in power. The Basque terrorist group ETA has been greatly weakened.
Yet, at a moment when most Spaniards are feeling good about themselves, the PP chose to focus its campaign on the dire evils allegedly represented by the Opposition, and especially on a supposed threat to the unity of the Spanish state.
More ironically still, Spain's political arithmetic dictates that a minority PP government would have to negotiate the support of Catalan and Basque nationalists. These are the parties whom the outgoing government has offended most deeply with what they perceive as the revival of an aggressive and authoritarian Spanish nationalism.
Such negotiations are a daunting prospect for Mariano Rajoy, the new PP leader. He faces the difficult task of taking up the mantle of the Prime Minister, José María Aznar, the man who has remade the Spanish right in his own uncharismatic but forceful image. Mr Aznar had always said he would step down after two terms, and last autumn he honoured his promise.
However, the manner of his departure showed the iron grip Mr Aznar has exercised over the PP. He simply selected his successor, and his decision was rubber-stamped. He has also played a very active part in this election campaign.
On the plus side, Mr Aznar has handed over a highly efficient party machine to Mr Rajoy. This contrasts with the continuing disarray in the opposition Socialist Party (PSOE), despite the fresh and initially promising leadership offered by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
Indeed, last May's municipal elections showed that not even Mr Aznar's deeply unpopular support for the invasion of Iraq would do the PP much damage with the electorate. The failure of the PSOE to make decisive gains on that occasion has since been compounded by a corruption scandal that left the party trailing in opinion polls.
The Socialists did come out on top in elections to the Catalan autonomous parliament in November. However, the PP used the PSOE's choice of coalition partners in this powerful regional government as a stick to beat them with. These partners are the Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (ICV), a leftist group made up of former communists and greens, and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), a group which breaks two of Spain's great political taboos: it opposes the monarchy, and advocates independence for Catalonia.
The PSOE is not committed to such policies, or to any such coalition arrangement in Madrid. But the PP has focused mercilessly on the Socialists' allegedly dangerous new liaisons. Mr Aznar warned the Spanish people last Sunday that if they did not give his party an absolute majority, they risked being governed by "a radical coalition of malcontents, communists and separatists".
Mr Rajoy's style is less confrontational than Mr Aznar's, but he has defended his refusal to engage in a TV debate with Mr Zapatero on the grounds that the other members of the "PSOE coalition" would not be present.
This central plank of the PP campaign was given a huge boost last January by an event which has overshadowed the election race since then. It emerged that Josep Lluís Carod Rovira, leader of the ERC and a senior minister in the new Catalan government, had held a secret meeting with ETA.
This appears to have been a private initiative, but the PP described it as tantamount to collaboration with terrorism, and declared the PSOE guilty by association.
The Socialists insisted that Mr Carod resign from his ministry, but they remained in coalition with his party in Barcelona. The PP position was dramatically reinforced when, just as the election campaign went into top gear in February, ETA called a "ceasefire" that applied only to Catalonia. This naturally outraged most Spaniards elsewhere.
Then, last Sunday week, police foiled an attempt by ETA to transport a massive car-bomb to Madrid. This should have copperfastened the PP's lead in the election race, as the epitome of its efficient counter-terrorist strategy.
Instead, the PP response marked the moment when the outgoing government started to lose the run of itself. Its flagrant attempts to portray the PSOE as fellow travellers of terrorists and separatists backfired.
In recent days, Mr Rajoy has noticeably softened the PP's campaign tone. He was "not seeking the vote of fear, but the vote of conviction," he said pointedly. In saying this, he may be stepping out from Mr Aznar's shadow.
He even used the word "dialogue", long equated with "cowardly compromise" in the lexicon of the PP. He hinted that mistakes might have been made over Iraq. And he said he was willing to discuss all aspects of policy, even the structure of the state, with all comers, though he would not be "blackmailed".
The slippage in the opinion polls may yet give him some consolation. If he has to negotiate with Basque and Catalan nationalists from next Monday, it will give him an excuse to shape his own politics in a more flexible form than his predecessor's. This might not be a bad thing, for Mr Rajoy and for Spain.