MANY comfortable cliches are being turned inside out during the Spanish general election campaign.
It used to be a safe generalisation that older people tended to vote for the right, and younger people for the left. Not any longer. After 13 years of Socialist Party (PSOE) governments, many young people see the right wing Partido Popular (PP), which is likely to win the elections, as the fashionable option, perhaps even as a radical choice.
Much of the shrinking electoral base of the PSOE consists of senior citizens, fearful that a PP government would slash pensions and dismantle the welfare state. It was no coincidence, therefore, that the leaders of both parties made concerted efforts this week to reach the, constituencies where they are losing ground.
On Monday evening the Prime Minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez, arrived in Fuenlabrada, a soulless conglomeration of high rise flats in what used to be called Madrid's Red Belt.
He was to address the Young Socialists, who still sport red stars' and clenched fists on their banners, curiously archaic emblems for Mr Gonzalez's party, which bears little resemblance to the Marxist organisation he joined 30 years ago.
Fuenlabrada boasts the youngest population in Europe, but fewer than 3,000 turned out not quite enough to fill a small indoors sports stadium, despite the presence of delegates from all over Spain.
It came as a culture shock, to this reporter to find them being warmed, up by a video of the Chieftains' latest version of Mo ghile mear. Mr Gonzalez indeed looked the part of a "bright warrior" in another video, which showed him as a long haired student radical. But those were other days, and the contrast was all the stronger when he came on stage and gave an avuncular speech.
Many of you young people," he said, "will not remember the last right wing government. You have no other point of reference than socialist governments. But let me tell you that, if the right had ruled for the last 13 years, there would be no divorce, no abortion, no rights to proper education, health and social services."
Attacking the Communists, who say he has betrayed socialism, he declared that "the real left is the left which transforms a country." Turning to the future, he made some rather vague comments on work sharing and technology, but seemed happier calling rhetorically for abstraction like "peace, liberty and tolerance".
He remains a powerful, charismatic orator, but his slightly jaded manner suggested that, on his seventh outing as candidate, this is a campaign too far.
Yesterday morning the PP candidate, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, had an unscheduled meeting with pensioners in a Madrid suburb. This time the hall was packed, with thousands of people left outside. Mr Aznar is not famous as a crowd pleaser. He is small, awkward and manifestly shy.
But he did well with this elderly audience, assuring them again and again that there was no threat to the welfare state from the PP. "No one in need," he insisted, "will fall by the wayside under our administration."
One of his warm up speakers had let slip that "a sick welfare system needs shock treatment". But in a campaign where specific policies are diffcult to identify, Mr Aznar was making solid commitments. In this context, it be comes difficult to paint him as a full blooded Thatcherite free marketeer, still less as a crypto-fascist, as the PSOE has tried to do.
Looking round the hall at the assembled multitude, many of whom no doubt once supported Franco more or less enthusiastically, it was equally difficult to see them as other than born again democrats, happy to be in a party which fits into the European mainstream.
The only clue that Spain is still not quite a normal democracy came in Mr Aznar's manifest concern to convey the idea that a transfer of power from one party to another was nothing very dramatic.