The Spanish local elections looked similar to our own general election in one respect - they took on the character of a referendum on the leaders of the two major parties.
The result was a clear, if narrow, victory for the man who played tough, Mariano Rajoy, leader of the stridently right-wing Partido Popular (PP). He gained the advantage over the charming, but fluffy, centre-left prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, by 160,000 votes. General elections are due by next April. Rajoy has pointed out that no recent Spanish government has retained national power after losing a local poll.
This was certainly a very bad result, especially in Madrid, for the centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE). It had returned to power three years ago, under Zapatero's untried leadership, with a promise of revitalising Spain. Yet today the country is more deeply divided than at any time since the transition to democracy in the 1970s.
It was the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings, in 2004, which swept the PSOE unexpectedly into government. The PP's insistence that ETA, and not Islamists, was behind the attacks was read - with some justification - by many voters as an irresponsible attempt to play politics with terrorism. The PP never accepted its defeat and has shifted away from its centre-right position to become the most traditional expression of rightist Spanish nationalism since Franco.
This should have been an advantage to a young leader like Zapatero, very much in the Blair mould. Indeed, the PP's rhetoric has driven every other party into de facto alignment with the government. If Rajoy maintains the PP's rightward trend, he can only become prime minister if he wins an absolute majority next year. That would be most unlikely if Zapatero had not squandered his political assets, despite a solid economic performance. This has been most obvious in his attempt, admirable in itself, to launch a Basque peace process. The PP found that it was popular to revive old fears about the "break-up of Spain" and accused him of surrendering to terrorism. ETA also proved deeply ambiguous in its own response.
It is hard to imagine any peace process advancing under similar conditions, but there is no doubt that Zapatero lacked the skills required in any case. The continued banning of Batasuna, ETA's political counterpart, leaves many Basques without democratic representation; it is feared that ETA may well choose this moment to embark on a new terrorist campaign. Zapatero and his party will need to show more wisdom, and more mettle, if Spain is not to continue to slide towards deeper and more disturbing divisions.