SPANISH voters, like most electors, have good reason to be sceptical about election promises.
Mr Felipe Gonzalez's Socialist Party (PSOE) promised 800,000 new jobs in 1982. During more than 13 years of PSOE administration since, little has been heard of them, and unemployment has climbed to more than 23 per cent.
Employment is still regarded by most parties as the biggest issue in the campaign leading to next Sunday's general election, which is likely to be won by Mr Jose Maria Aznar and his Partido Popular (PP).
Given that this would be the first democratic transfer of power from left to right in Spain since 1934, one might expect that the campaign would have generated significant policy clashes on the economy and other questions.
In fact, each of the major parties has preferred to attack the other, often in highly personalised and demagogic terms, rather than put forward its own ideas in any detail.
Perhaps this is because these ideas converge much more than either would like to acknowledge, and are conditioned by the same commitment towards meeting the criteria for European Monetary Union. In terms of employment, the PSOE is strongly advocating the rapid extension of job sharing schemes, a policy to which the party was only recently converted.
The PP argues that job sharing is simply a way of disguising failure to create jobs, and advocates agreement between the social partners to increase employment.
However, the party has probably been embarrassed by the vocal support of one of those partners, the bankers' and employers' organisations. which have called for far more painful policies than Mr Aznar will endorse. In a major TV interview yesterday morning, he insisted that "as long as I am President", there would be no moves to make it easier to sack people.
Both parties claim to be equally committed to maintaining the welfare state, although Mr Gonzalez repeatedly accuses Mr Aznar of having a secret agenda to dismantle it.
The PP adamantly denies this, but it is not clear how it can maintain existing levels of social support, particularly pensions, unemployment benefit and health services, while committed to reducing employers' contributions to social services.
Likewise, the PP's proposal to reduce the top tax rate to 40 per cent (the PSOE offers 50 per cent) must have an impact on the quality of social services, unless it can stimulate an unprecedented level of growth and new jobs to make up the difference.
The other big issue of the elections has been terrorism by the Basque separatist organisation ETA. Again, both parties have more in common than divides them, at least on paper. Both claim that they will use the full force of existing law, and nothing outside the law, to combat political violence.
The PP's proposal that convicted terrorists must serve their full sentences is the only concrete sign that Mr Aznar, once in power, will take a significantly harder line than has Mr Gonzalez.