20 November, 2011

Spain: not at the crossroads, nothing to see

Spain goes to the polls today, a little reluctant and without, it would appear, much in the way of hope. A curious feature of the elections is that, rather like the last ones, they don't seem to be offering the voter any choice about Spain itself.

Until 2004 the Prime Minister had been José Maria Aznar, who was coming to the end of a second 4 year term. You may recall the fiasco over the Madrid train bombing, which happened just a couple of days before the 2004 election. Aznar claimed it was the work of Basque terrorists (the Basque ETA group had tried to assassinate him at least once) whereas the atrocity was in fact committed by an Islamist terror group, as a protest against Spain's involvement in the Iraq war.

On the back of this Aznar's party lost the 2004 elections, bringing José Luis Zapatero to power. Following their re-election in 2008 Zapatero was burned out and this election  will be between two men not previously in the front line: neither of whom seems to be much loved by the electorate. The disappointed Spanish believe that there is little difference between the two on the most important topic, austerity measures, and that they probably both have to toe the Merkel-line anyway.

Nothing much to see here.

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